Ravi Shankar - Guest Tribute

I asked my friend John Klaus to write a tribute to Ravi Shankar as he is very knowledgeable about him having seen him twice in concert -- once in Chicago and once in Vienna.


Ravi Shankar, the internationally-beloved musician who almost single-handedly brought Classical Indian music to the attention of the Western world, died Tuesday, December 11 in California.  He was 92, the same age as jazz great Dave Brubeck, who died last week.

Shankar, who was given the honorific title “Pandit” (roughly the equivalent of “Maestro”), began performing as a teenager with his brother’s dance company, and toured Europe as a dancer. He gave up dancing in 1938, and embarked upon serious study of the sitar, a venerable Indian plucked string instrument.  For all of his future fame, it is wise to bear in mind that Shankar was a virtuoso composer and performer, and it was upon this solid and uncontestable foundation that he built his career.

Ravi Shankar first came to widespread recognition in the West when George Harrison, of Beatles fame, learned of Shankar’s music through his friends The Byrds, and began to study sitar.  Though he was never a proficient sitar player, Harrison incorporated the instrument into several of the Beatles’ songs.  Meanwhile Shankar continued to travel and perform widely in Europe and the United States, astonishing audiences with his virtuosity and great musicality.

Shankar had met the Classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin in the mid-1950s.  The two men shared an interest in world music, and became fast friends—and, in later years, musical collaborators. This cooperation between two stellar musicians of vastly differing cultures was typical of Shankar’s contribution to widespread understanding of the music of India, and it led to his fame outside his native country, where he was already highly revered.  During the 1960s and 1970s, Shankar introduced millions to his music through live performances and many recordings.  He was kind and generous with his time and knowledge, and encouraged several generations of young Americans and Europeans to examine Indian Classical music. 

For the last three decades of his life, Pandit Shankar was acknowledged as one of the foremost musicians in the world.  It was probably his willing and, indeed, enthusiastic cooperation with Western musicians that made him widely known beyond those interested only in new and curious sounds, and brought him—and with him the vast repertoire of music for the sitar—into focus with many serious musicians in the Western tradition.

The video shows a sample of his collaboration with violinist Yehudi Mehuhin at the latter’s summer music festival in Gstaad, Switzerland.