IMCRadio.Net's first Obituary (English Version) for Sitar Legend RAVI SHANKAR (4/7/1920-12/11/2012)

7/29/2019 IMCRadio.Net's first Obituary (English Version) for Sitar Legend RAVI SHANKAR (4/7/1920-12/11/2012)

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ElJay Arem

Pt. Ravi Shankar

IMCRadio.Net's first tribute to the sitar legend Ravi Shankar (7.4.1920-11.12.2012)Posted by ElJay Arem (IMC OnAir) on December 16, 2012

12/13/2012 (1:1 reprint)

A radio commentary byElJay Arem(cultural journalist, media producer & radio presenter)

For reminiscence (as pure Text version (no music examples) 11 min 54 sec long)and relistening please visit IMCRadio.Nets Media Archive:http://www.imcradio.net/radioarchive/2012/12/

broadcasting dates ...

13thDecember 2012 - 10:00-10:15 p.m. CET (4:00-04:15 pm EST) @ TIDE Radio (DE)(premiere: December 13, 2012 07:00-07:15 p.m. @ radio multicult.fm (Berlin))

broadcasting plan | streaming (Internet Radio & Mobile Radio) | Podcast

(1) An obituary "World Music?- Heritage of Sitar legend Pandit Ravi Shankar."

Sitar legend Ravi Shankar died at the age of 92 on 11thDecember 2012 around

04:30 pm local time in San Diego, on the Pacific coast of North America

The news of Ravi Shankars death a few days after surgery on his heart in a

hospital near his home in California went across the ticker in the night from

Tuesday to Wednesday (European time), and quickly via Twitter and Facebook

around the world. The worldwide sympathy within the community of music lovers and their mourning felt

like a shock wave. I myself choose wisely the term music lovers of Indian classical music whose

representative Ravi Shankar was.

As cultural journalist one is very tempted to indulge in stereotypical reviews. In view of the more than eight

(8) decades of Ravi Shankars musical career one can find that he was a master to promote his own

career extremely radical, not only on the Sitar. Lately at the age of 58 years his first daughter Norah

Jones was born and two years later Anoushka Shankar, the younger half sister. Both daughters are

known to different audiences worldwide with very different careers in music. (Editor's note:The only son

of Ravi Shankar, Shubhendra Shankar who lived from 1942 till 1992 was a painter and sitar player.

Ravi's son came from his marriage with Annapurna Devi (see below).)

On the obit of Ravi Shankar the music label East meets West music of the Ravi Shankar Foundation

released the DVD "Ravi Shankar - Tenth Decade in Concert". The DVD is a documentary with a concert

the 91 year old Ravi Shankar had given (in October 2011) in Escondido, California.

[01:53:29: Music Example 1 .. Raga Mala]


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(2.1) World Music ...

The "Godfather of World Music is dead - Long live the Godfather of World Music". This image of the

primal father of world music was marked heavily by George Harrison of The Beatles... until his own death

in November 2001.

It would be inappropriate to reduce Ravi Shankar on his lifetime and close friendship with George

Harrison. - And it would be unwise as the dispatch of Ravi Shankar to his audience and to the artists in

the global music circus is a totally different.

What does world music mean in the 20th or 21st century ? - The least known is that Western Classical

style developed from Indian classical music on the way via Greece and its five-tone musi - the pentatonic

music - into the sacred church modes in medieval time of Old Europe. Thus it is justified that in

India Johann Sebastian Bach is called the most Indian-sounding composer of the West. Johann S. Bach

lived from 1658 to 1750.

So why should be seen world music as a modern genre of music? - What does the term world music in

the eyes of today's viewer mean ? - And what did it mean in the understanding of George Harrison who

took sitar lessons from Ravi Shankar while traveling with The Beatles in India to quest for meaning. It was

the time of the hippie movement. The hype which surrounded The Beatles as one of the first commercially

boy group also alienated a George Harrison. He too was rather seriously with the music as Ravi Shankar

himself. George Harrison realized the commercialisation of a global music industry - as it began in the

60's with rock music and the 68 student movement - might be harmfuly for the existence of a real

musician.

George Harrison who had come with The Beatles to wealth thus understood himself as a protector and

father figure for Ravi Shankar, who was more seriously with the pure classical form of Indian music -

despite his exaggerations in the commercialization of Indian classical music.

(2.2) Education ...

On closer examination Ravi Shankar hasnt left his roots of Indian classical music. He was trained

together with Sarod legend Ali Akbar Khan and Alis highly talented sister Annapurna Devi by both

father Allaudhin Khan. The education was dominated by the traditional pedagogic form of Indian

Classical music, a personal, lifelong teacher-student relationship - Guru-Shishya parampara.


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Ravi Shankar probably wouldnt have become such outstanding sitar mastro without his long-time

companion Ali Akbar Khan (on the Sarod), both equally suffering during the education. The strong hand of

Allaudhin Khan to his son Ali Akbar deterred the sensitive Ravi. It is due to the action of Ali Akbar Khan

that Ravi Shankar hasnt chucked and later even married Ali Akbar's sister Annapurna Devi. Annapurna

was probably the most gifted talents of all three. But she back turned her own artistic development to the

benefit of Ravi Shankar's own career. Her marriage with Ravi Shankar was consummated in 1941.

Annapurna Devi was just 14 years old and seven (7) years younger than Ravi Shankar.

Working as a cultural journalist one can certainly learn from the interviews with top world-class musicians

such as percussionist Trilok Gurtu from Mumbai, the Indian violinist Kala Ramnath or IndoJazz

saxophonist George Brooks. From their experiences of international music projects these truly globalized

people think no more in national borders as politicians and high diplomacy still do and herewith create

potentials of new conflicts. In the political sense Ravi Shankar was certainly a globalized musician as the

Santoor maestro Shiv Kumar Sharma called it in his first reaction to the demise of Ravi Shankar.

As a wanderer between the worlds of music Ravi Shankar received a mindset training at the age of ten

(10) by his brother Uday Shankar. Uday took with him the little Ravi for his perennial dance tours

(Compaigne de Danse et Musique) through Europe. Thus Ravi received the chance in 1930 to meet an

European culture before the second World War - and learnt to understand the balance of his own Indian

origin. Ravi Shankar was on an early check of his own identity rethinkening and questioning about the

existing privileges as a member of a highly ranked Brahmin family in the Indian caste system.

Just as important as Ravi Shankar's socialization are some artistic milestones, e.g. he had taken with the

virtuoso violinist Sir Yehudi Menuhin. The collaboration started already in the 50s. On the origins of

Indian democracy Menuhin frequently came to India for his personal studies of Indian classical music.

Yehudin had understood the very essence of Indian classics from a distance by his own origin and

character of Western classics. To date the North Indian classics as Ravi Shankar was its representative

this music is largely improvised within a differentiated set of rules for countless Raga scales.

The collaboration between Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin is documented on the double album "West

meets East". It was published in the year 1966 as part 1 and one year later 1967 as part 2.

[07:15:22: Music Example 2 .. Raga Piloo]


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(3) Commercialization ... Tradition & Modernity

Music is a language which can be understood cross-border and internationally. In this sense one may

always define music by its essence as universal language and therefore as world music. This term

includes not automatically that musicians from different cultures and the combination of stylistic elements

of different music systems produce qualitatively good world music.

Ravi Shankar has also learned from his own experiments. His performances at the Monterey

International Pop Music Festival in 1967 in California, two years later at the Woodstock Festival or in New

York City at Madison Square Gardens in August 1971 - with the tabla legend Alla Rakha and Sarod

maestro Ali Akbar Khan for the Concert for Bangladesh which was initialized by The Beatles - this time

Ravi Shankar later regretted retrospectively. The hype which surrounded Ravi Shankar was part of the

hippie culture. A noisy audience that Ravi Shankar's sitar has probably misunderstood as an access to

enlightenment was even less in good memories for Ravi Shankar himself.

However Ravi Shankar retained his curiosity for new music into higher ages, similar to jazz legend Miles

Davis. Ravi Shankar published in 1990 at the age of 70 the album Passages along with the American

composer Philip Glass, one of the leading exponents of contemporary music. The collaboration came

about by Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream, the German music group for electronic music. Tangerine

Dream was founded by Edgar Froese in the early 1967th.

[09:27:23: Music Example 3 .. Ragas in Minor Scale]


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(4) Art & Politics ...

Ravi Shankar understood himself as world citizen with his lifestyle and the education of his daughter

Anoushka in London, Delhi and California. He was a wanderer between cultures. The choice of his first

home was for North America, free of bourgeois conventions and without having lefft his own position as a

musician of North Indian classics.

Striking and not without controversy among music lovers was seen Ravi Shankars recording in the days

of glasnost and perestroika under Michail Sergejewitsch Gorbatschow. The album Inside the Kremlin is a

live recording of Ravi Shankar's performance at the 'Palace of Culture', in 1988. For Inside the Kremlin

Ravi Shankar played together with an orchestra of 140 musicians who came from India and the Soviet

Union. As is known the Russian Communism came to an end in 1991.

[10:59:24: Music Example 4 .. Tarana]

(5) Indian philosophy... Spirituality

To be a true musician means also to be the pursuit of truth in man forever. Ravi Shankar was influenced

for his musical work by the spirit of Indian philosophy, the Vedanta. The ancient Vedanta was the basis for

Hinduism and also Buddhism. In our time we would understand Ravi Shankar's attitude towards music

and life as spiritual. Ravi Shankar was a master in sadhana. It is a spiritual discipline through training,

personal effort, the task of the ego to achieve a spiritual goal, in the case of Ravi Shankar through

music. There is a variety of shots that express this spiritual attitude of Ravi Shankar and his

understanding of man as a spiritual being.

[12:21:17: Music Example 5 .. Asato Maa (Shanti Mantra)]


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(6) Musical offspring... perspectives of the future

It may be seen critically that Ravi Shankar attracted the rich and powerful ones and getting heavily media

attention for his personal success. He was also represented in the board of some big Indian record

companies such as HMV and Saregama and thus had a direct influence on the market dominating record

labels and their productions of his music. Ravi Shankar's personal evaluations of young talents in Indian

classical music often decided about the existence or non-existence of musical careers.

Nevertheless we can understand the legacy of Ravi Shankar that the awareness of own background,

musical roots and remaining true to oneself are the requirements for an understanding of sustainable real

and traditional values as found in the art form of Indian classical music. Ravi Shankar's success was

based on the resistance during the last five (5) decades, against modernity in terms of trends as we know

it in pop and event culture of mega festivals.

Our post-industrialized, modern multi-ethnic societies try currently to understand the mechanisms of inter-

culturalism. The decades of work and Ravi Shankars continuously creativity can provide to us orientation

points.

A few weeks before his death Ravi Shankar was nominated for the Grammy in the category "Best World

Music", for his latest album "Living Room Sessions - Part 1" (produced in 2012). Thus Ravi Shankar was

a few days ago in competition with his daughter Anoushka Shankar, who has also been proposed as a

Grammy contender for her world music album "Traveller". It was released in 2011 by the label Deutsche

Grammophon. Ravi Shankar will be concerned posthumously for the "Grammy Lifetime Achievement

Award" on 10th

February 2013 at the 55th Grammy Award night, alongside six other artists like the

Temptations or the Jazz musician Charlie Haden. Then we might consider again the function of

godfathers and concepts of world music.

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IMCRadio.Net's first Obituary (English Version) for Sitar Legend RAVI SHANKAR (4/7/1920-12/11/2012)

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