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The Master Lays His Sitar Down
Sitar Maestro Ravi Shanker recently gave his last public concert in London. He would have liked to play on but his eighty eight- year- old body is not willing to cooperate. “It comes down to the fact,” said a friend of Shanker, “that his spirit is willing to play on but his body will not let that happen.”
The man who taught George Harrison of The Beatles the sitar, and inspired Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones and myriad other Western musicians to learn the Sitar, now wants a little down time away from constant travel and the bright lights. So great was his influence on Western music culture that the organizers of the now legendary Woodstock Festival, held in 1969, asked him to play at the three-day concert in Upstate New York.
Ravi Shankar’s Western connections however were not confined to only music. He had a nine- year- old affair with a dancer, Sue Jones, the result of which was a stunning talented child named Geethali Norah Jones Shankar. Geethali later shortened her name to Nora Jones. Norah Jones was the big winner at the 45th Annual Grammy Awards, personally taking five awards in her first-ever Grammy appearance, including the coveted album of the year award for ‘Come Away With Me.’
Ravi Shanker’s oldest daughter, born from his Indian wife, is Anoushka Shankar, who today is a talented and famous Sitar player
Ravi Shankar is credited with adding percussion (tabla) to Sitar and this changed the face of Indian music around the world.
His daughter Anoushka Shankar says, “He added the bass string that is quite common now. He created the modern notation system for Indian music. The tabla player was never really an important factor until my father made percussion a central part. A lot of what people now consider Indian music can be traced back to him.”
And so, the curtain has come down partially on a legendary musician. Will he ever perform in public again? No one can answer that question but Ravi Shankar; however, he has two talented daughters who have been blessed with his musical genes. One lives in America the other in India. Ravi Shankar leaves the stage, leaving behind a great legacy and two great musicians to carry on his revolution in both the East and West. The raga of Shankar is not over.
Hopefully in the future, the Shankar girls will record a duet album. Talk about the East meeting West, it will be a near perfect collobration. Nora Jones possesses soft shades of Jazz while Anoushka Shankar is pure Indian Classical. Coming together musically, to create a fusion that will ignite and burn brightly will not be easy. However, one has to remember that the gene pool from which these girls were created is legendary and deep. Anything is possible. They are after all, The Shankar Girls.
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