Ravi Shankar (born Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian musician and a composer of Hindustani classical music. He was one of the best-known exponents of the sitar in the second half of the 20th century and influenced many other musicians throughout the world. In 1956 he began to tour Europe and the Americas playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison. His influence on the latter helped popularize the use of Indian instruments in pop music throughout the 1960s. Shankar engaged Western music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra, and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. He continued to perform until the end of his life. In 1999, Shankar was awarded India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna. (More from Wikipedia)
Also from Wikipedia: “[George] Harrison became a vegetarian in the late 1960s, and a devotee of the Indian mystic Paramahansa Yogananda, a guru who proselytised Kriya yoga, after he was given Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi by Ravi Shankar. (Yogananda and three other major figures from Kriya yoga, Sri Mahavatar Babaji, Sri Yukteswar Giri, and Sri Lahiri Mahasaya appear on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.)”
(September 2014)
* * *
Another important influence is the sitar music of Ravi Shankar, “particularly in the droning quality of the song’s vocal melody and in [Jim] McGuinn’s guitar playing” (as noted in Wikipedia). The Byrds even brought a sitar with them to a press conference that was used to promote “Eight Miles High”, even though a sitar was not used in the recording.
Ravi Shankar is an acknowledged master of the sitar and began promoting Indian classical music in 1956, including appearances at major music gatherings like the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival (Shankar’s first performance at a rock event) and the original Woodstock in 1969.
(July 2015)
