Musicians - Ravi Shankar

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	Musicians - Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar (born April 7 1920 in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India) is a Bengali-Indian musician best known for his virtuosity on the sitar.

A disciple of Allauddin Khan (founder of the Maihar gharana of Indian classical music), Pandit Ravi Shankar is arguably the best-known Indian instrumentalist, and is well known for his pioneering work in bringing the power and appeal of the Indian classical music tradition, as well as Indian music and its performers in general, to the West. This was done through his association with The Beatles as well as with his own personal charisma. His musical career spans over six decades and Shankar currently holds the Guinness Record for the longest international career.

Early life

His ancestral home is the present day Kalia Upozila in Narail District, Jessore, Bangladesh. His mother's name was Hemanginee, and his elder brother Uday Shankar was a famous Indian classical dancer. As a teenager Ravi played sitar with Uday Shankar's dance troupe, most notably with Anna Pavlova in the Soviet Union.

Musical career

Ravi Shankar gave up a possible dance career, and starting in 1938 he spent long years of dedicated study under his guru Allaudin Khan. His first public performances in India came in 1939. Formal training ended in 1944 and he worked out of Bombay. He began writing scores for film and ballet and started a recording career with HMV's Indian affiliate. He became music director of All India Radio in the 1950s.

Shankar then became well known to the music world outside India, first performing in the Soviet Union in 1954 and then the West in 1956. He performed in major events such as the Edinburgh Festival as well as major venues such as Royal Festival Hall.

George Harrison, a member of The Beatles, began experimenting with the sitar in 1965. The two eventually met due to this common interest and became close friends, and that in turn expanded Shankar's fame as a pop star and as Harrison's mentor. This development greatly expanded his career. He was invited to play venues that were unusual for a classical musician, such as the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival in Monterey, California. He was also one of the artists who performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. Ravi Shankar & Friends was also the opening act for Harrison's 1974 tour of the United States.

Shankar has been critical of some facets of the Western reception of Indian music. On a trip to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district after performing in Monterey, Shankar wrote "I felt offended and shocked to see India being regarded so superficially and its great culture being exploited. Yoga, Tantra, mantra, kundalini, ganja, aashish, Kama Sutra? They all became part of a cocktail that everyone seemed to be lapping up!" In 1969 he published an English language autobiography, .

Shankar has written two concertos for sitar and orchestra, violin-sitar compositions for Yehudi Menuhin and himself, music for flute virtuoso Jean Pierre Rampal, and music for Hozan Yamamoto, master of the shakuhachi (Japanese flute), and koto virtuoso Musumi Miyashita. He has composed extensively for films and ballets in India, Canada, Europe, and the United States, including Chappaqua, Charly, Gandhi, and the Apu Trilogy. His recording Tana Mana, released on the Private Music label in 1987, penetrated the New Age genre with its unique combination of traditional instruments with electronics. The classical composer Philip Glass acknowledges Shankar as a major influence, and the two collaborated to produce Passages, a recording of compositions in which each reworks themes composed by the other. Shankar also composed the sitar part in Glass's 2004 composition Orion.

Family life

When Ravi Shankar was 21, he married 14-year-old Annapurna Devi, daughter of his guru Baba Allauddin Khan and sister of Ali Akbar Khan in Almora. The marriage produced one son, Shubhendra Shankar, but ended in divorce.

He became involved with American concert promoter Sue Jones but they did not marry. Their union, however, produced one daughter, the Grammy winner Norah Jones. He later married an admirer, Sukanya Kotiyan (née Rajan) and their marriage produced a second daughter named Anoushka Shankar.

Shankar's daughters Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones are also musicians. Anoushka is a sitarist and performs frequently with Shankar, in addition to having her own recording career. Jones has achieved considerable professional success, including several Grammy Awards, by herself with no assistance from her father. Shankar is also the uncle of the late sitarist Ananda Shankar.

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Musicians - Ravi Shankar

Early life

Musical career

Family life

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