Sitar virtuoso and legendary musician Pandit Ravi Shankar passed away on December 11 at the age of 92. Shankar had been in poor health leading to heart valve replacement surgery a week ago.
Born Robindra Shankar in 1920 in Varanasi, India, Shankar was raised by his mother in near poverty along with his three older brothers. At the age of 10, his oldest brother Uday relocated the family to Paris. He began playing and dancing in Uday’s group, touring Europe and America playing Indian classical music. Though he only had four years of formal schooling, during these years he met and was educated by everyone from Gertrude Stein to Duke Ellington and W.C. Fields to Igor Stravinsky.
In 1938 he began seven years of intense study with guru Ustand Allaudin Khan and also married into the Kahn family, which included Ali Akbar Kahn who went on to become the world’s leading sarod player. Over the next two decades Shankar’s powerful, unique sitar playing and work combining different Indian musical styles made him a star in India. He began scoring films, composing ragas, and working with theater groups.
In the mid-1950s, Shankar began following his dream of introducing the Western world to Eastern music, touring the USSR, Europe, and the United States where he influenced musicans and composers including John Coltrane. He opened a music school in Bombay and continued to expand his work in film and theater.
In 1966, he met George Harrison; the two remained lifelong friends. During the ’70s, they released two albums together and also organized the Concert for Bangladesh, the first such benefit concert. They collaborated again in 1997 on another album, and Harrison co-produced a box set of Shankar’s music.
Shankar received many honors thoughout his career, including Grammy wins and Academy Award nominations, India’s Bharat Ratna award, France’s Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur, and honorary British knighthood. He was commissioned for new compositions by the London Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and many other orchestras from around the globe. He collaborated with composers and musicians as diverse as Phillip Glass, Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, shakuhachi virtuoso Hosan Yamamoto, koto virtuoso Musumi Miyashita, and many, many more.
He was a member of India’s parliment from 1986 to 1992, and was also the author of three books. He never considered retiring, and performed annual tours until the end of his life. He composed his third sitar concerto at 90, and stated in 2009 that he felt each year he was becoming a better musician and increasingly creative.
He is survived by his wife, his daughters multi-Grammy-winner Norah Jones and sitarist/world-music composer and Grammy-nominee Anoushka Shankar, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.