Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar KBE (Bengali pronunciation: [ˈrobi ˈʃɔŋkor]; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury,[2] sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury;[3] 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known expert of North Indian classical music in the second half of the 20th century,[4] and influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999.
For other people named Ravi Shankar, see Ravi Shankar (disambiguation).
Ravi Shankar
Shankar was born to a Bengali family[5][6] in India,[7] and spent his youth as a dancer touring India and Europe with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. At age 18, he gave up dancing to pursue a career in music, studying the sitar for seven years under court musician Allauddin Khan. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score for scoring the blockbuster Gandhi (1982).
In 1956, Shankar 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 Harrison helped popularize the use of Indian instruments in Western pop music in the latter half of the 1960s. Shankar engaged Western music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992, he served as a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Parliament of India. He continued to perform until the end of his life. He was a recipient of numerous prestigious musical accolades, including a Polar Music Prize and four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for The Concert for Bangladesh in 1973.
Early life[edit]
Shankar was born on 7 April 1920 in Benares (now Varanasi), then the capital of the eponymous princely state, in a Bengali Hindu family, as the youngest of seven brothers.[3][8][9] His father, Shyam Shankar Chowdhury, was a Middle Temple barrister and scholar who originally from Jessore district, East Bengal (now Bangladesh). A respected statesman, lawyer and politician, he served for several years as dewan (Prime Minister) of Jhalawar, Rajasthan, and used the Sanskrit spelling of the family name and removed its last part.[3][10] Shyam was married to Hemangini Devi who hailed from a small village named Nasrathpur in Mardah block of Ghazipur district, near Benares and her father was a prosperous landlord. Shyam later worked as a lawyer in London, England,[3] and there he married a second time while Devi raised Shankar in Benares and did not meet his son until he was eight years old.[3]
Shankar shortened the Sanskrit version of his first name, Ravindra, to Ravi, for "sun".[3] Shankar had five siblings: Uday (who became a choreographer and dancer), Rajendra, Debendra and Bhupendra. Shankar attended the Bengalitola High School in Benares between 1927 and 1928.[11]
At the age of 10, after spending his first decade in Benares, Shankar went to Paris with the dance group of his brother, choreographer Uday Shankar.[12][13] 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.[8][9] Uday's dance group travelled Europe and the United States in the early to mid-1930s and Shankar learned French, discovered Western classical music, jazz, cinema and became acquainted with Western customs.[14] Shankar heard Allauddin Khan – the lead musician at the court of the princely state of Maihar – play at a music conference in December 1934 in Calcutta, and Uday persuaded the Maharaja of Maihar H.H. Maharaja Brijnath singh Judev in 1935 to allow Khan to become his group's soloist for a tour of Europe.[14] Shankar was sporadically trained by Khan on tour, and Khan offered Shankar training to become a serious musician under the condition that he abandon touring and come to Maihar.[14]
Illness and death[edit]
On 9 December 2012, Shankar was admitted to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, San Diego, California after complaining of breathing difficulties. He died on 11 December 2012 at around 16:30 PST after undergoing heart valve replacement surgery.[118][119]
The Swara Samrat festival, organized on 5–6 January 2013 and dedicated to Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, included performances by such musicians as Shivkumar Sharma, Birju Maharaj, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Zakir Hussain, and Girija Devi.[120]