The Sun sets in the west!

In the work culture front, we always took the beating from the west but not in the cultural front. India is one of the oldest and its uniqueness lies within its multi-cultural society.  A billion plus population who speak different languages and if go by the book then it comes to be a several hundred of languages spoken around India yet we are one.

In musical front too India is very different from other countries. The various folk music always played an important part in our life. India also have two form of classical music, North Indian is known as Hindustani and South Indian as Carnatic music. Both streams are very different and both consists complex 'raga' frame. Some starlets who ruled the roost of Indian classical music are no more with us. Like Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan, Amir Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Ustad Allrekha, Ustad Bismillah Khan, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and recently we lost Pandit Ravishankar too.  Apart from oldies like Jakir Hussein, Amjad Ali Khan, Hari Prsad Chawrasia, Pandit Jasraj, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma,  there is dearth of talent in the current generation and there are no such flag bearer can be seen like the mentioned ones. This page a tribute to the one and only Pandit Ravishankar.

Pandit Ravi Shankar

Early Life

Ravi Shankar was born Robindro Shankar Chowdhury on 7 April 1920 in Varanasi to a Bengali Brahmin family. He was the youngest among the seven sibling.

At the age of ten, after spending his first decade in Varanasi, Ravi Shankar went to Paris with the dance group of his brother, choreographer Uday Shankar. By the age of 13 he had become a member of the group, accompanied its members on tour and learned to dance and play various Indian instruments. Uday Shankar's dance group toured Europe and the United States of America in the early to mid-1930s and Ravi Shankar learned French, discovered Western classical music, jazz, cinema and became acquainted with Western customs. Ravi Shankar heard the lead musician for the Maihar court, Allauddin Khan, in December 1934 at a music conference in Kolkata and Uday convinced the Maharaja of Maihar in 1935 to allow Khan to become his group's soloist for a tour of Europe. Ravi Shankar was sporadically trained by Khan on tour, and Khan offered Ravi Shankar training to become a serious musician under the condition that he abandon touring and come to Maihar. Ravi Shankar gave up his dancing career in 1938 to go to Maihar and study Indian classical music as Khan's pupil, living with his family in the traditional gurukul system. Khan was a rigorous teacher and Shankar had training on sitar and surbahar, learned ragas and the musical styles dhrupad, dhamar, and khyal, and was taught the techniques of the instruments rudra veena, rubab, and sursingar. Ravi Shankar began to perform publicly on sitar in December 1939 and his debut performance was a jugalbandi  with Ali Akbar Khan, who played the string instrument sarod.

Marriages and Affairs.

Shankar married Allauddin Khan's daughter Annapurna Devi in 1941 and a son, Shubhendra Shankar, was born in 1942. Ravi Shankar separated from Devi during the 1940s and had a relationship with Kamala Shastri, a danseuse, beginning in the late 1940s. An affair with Sue Jones, a New York concert producer, led to the birth of Norah Jones in 1979. After separating from Kamala Shastri in 1981, Ravi Shankar lived with Sue Jones until 1986. He married Sukanya Rajan in 1989. Anoushka Shankar was born to Shankar and Sukanya Rajan.

Liaison with George Harrison

George Harrison of The Beatles became interested in Indian classical music, bought a sitar and used it to record the song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". This led to Indian music being used by other musicians and created the raga rock trend. Harrison then met Ravi Shankar in London in 1966 and visited India for six weeks to study sitar under Ravi Shankar. Apart from others Ravi Shankar was also associated with many musical institution in USA

Awards

Shankar won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury at the 1957 Berlin International Film Festival for composing the music for the movie Kabuliwala. He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 1962, and was named a Fellow of the academy for 1975. Shankar was awarded the three highest national civil honours of India: Padma Bhushan, in 1967, Padma Vibhushan, in 1981, and Bharat Ratna, in 1999.

Death

He died on 11 December 2012 at a hospital near his home in Encinitas, California.

!!!“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.” ― Socrates!!!