teernabh5 Posted December 12, 2012 Share Posted December 12, 2012 Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitarist and composer whose collaborations with Western classical musicians as well as rock stars helped foster a worldwide appreciation of India’s traditional music, died Tuesday in a hospital near his home in Southern California. He was 92. Multimedia Video Ravi Shankar at the Monterey Pop Festival (YouTube) Related India Ink: Ravi Shankar's Death Mourned in India (December 12, 2012) India Ink: Outside India, Shankar Fascinated Generations of Fans (December 12, 2012) Times Topic: Ravi Shankar Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesarts for arts and entertainment news. Arts Twitter List: Critics, Reporters and Editors A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics. Go to Event Listings » Enlarge This Image Associated Press The Beatles' George Harrison with Ravi Shankar in 1967. Readers’ Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment » Read All Comments (82) » Mr. Shankar had suffered from upper respiratory and heart ailments in the last year and underwent heart-valve replacement surgery last Thursday, his family said in a statement. Mr. Shankar, a soft-spoken, eloquent man whose performance style embodied a virtuosity that transcended musical languages, was trained in both Eastern and Western musical traditions. Although Western audiences were often mystified by the odd sounds and shapes of the instruments when he began touring in Europe and the United States in the early 1950s, Mr. Shankar and his ensemble gradually built a large following for Indian music. His instrument, the sitar, has a small rounded body and a long neck with a resonating gourd at the top. It has 6 melody strings and 25 sympathetic strings (which are not played but resonate freely as the other strings are plucked). Sitar performances are partly improvised, but the improvisations are strictly governed by a repertory of ragas (melodic patterns representing specific moods, times of day, seasons of the year or events) and talas (intricate rhythmic patterns) that date back several millenniums. Mr. Shankar’s quest for a Western audience was helped in 1965 when George Harrison of the Beatles began to study the sitar with him. But Harrison was not the first Western musician to seek Mr. Shankar’s guidance. In 1952 he met and began performing with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, with whom he made three recordings for EMI: “West Meets East” (1967), “West Meets East, Vol. 2” (1968) and “Improvisations: East Meets West” (1977). Mr. Shankar loved to mix the music of different cultures. He collaborated with the flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal and the jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, who had become fascinated with Indian music and philosophy in the early ’60s. Coltrane met with Mr. Shankar several times from 1964 to 1966 to learn the basics of ragas, talas and Indian improvisation techniques. Coltrane named his son Ravi after Mr. Shankar. Mr. Shankar also collaborated with several prominent Japanese musicians — Hozan Yamamoto, a shakuhachi player, and Susumu Miyashita, a koto player — on “East Greets East,” a 1978 recording in which Indian and Japanese influences intermingled. In addition to his frequent tours as a sitarist Mr. Shankar was a prolific composer of film music (including the score for Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi” in 1982), ballets, electronic works and concertos for sitar and Western orchestras. In 1988 his seven-movement “Swar Milan” was performed at the Palace of Culture in Moscow by an ensemble of 140 musicians, including the Russian Folk Ensemble, members of the Moscow Philharmonic and the Ministry of Culture Chorus, as well as Mr. Shankar’s own group of Indian musicians. And in 1990 he collaborated with the Minimalist composer Philip Glass — who had worked as his assistant on the film score for “Chappaqua” in the late 1960s — on “Passages,” a recording of works he and Mr. Glass composed for each other. “I have always had an instinct for doing new things,” Mr. Shankar said in 1985. “Call it good or bad, I love to experiment.” Ravi Shankar, whose formal name was Robindra Shankar Chowdhury, was born on April 7, 1920, in Varanasi, India, to a family of musicians and dancers. His older brother Uday directed a touring Indian dance troupe, which Ravi joined when he was 10. Within five years he had become one of the company’s star soloists. He also discovered that he had a facility with the sitar and the sarod, another stringed instrument, as well as the flute and the tabla, an Indian drum. The idea of helping Western listeners appreciate the intricacies of Indian music occurred to him during his years as a dancer. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/arts/music/ravi-shankar-indian-sitarist-dies-at-92.html?hp&_r=0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nancyk58 Posted December 12, 2012 Share Posted December 12, 2012 R.I.P. and thanks for being an inspiration for the Beatles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest howyousawtheworld Posted December 12, 2012 Share Posted December 12, 2012 What a musician, what a man. RIP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prince Myshkin Posted December 12, 2012 Share Posted December 12, 2012 Got into him a bit last year. I have to be in the mood for him, naturally, as it's a departure from a lot of the things I listen to (though he has influenced some of that as we all know). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Bauer Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 Just started learning about him in my World Music class. That's ashame :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Final Track Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 Dave Brubeck and Ravi Shankar just days after each other :sad: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prospector Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 Norah Jones cancelled the show she was doing here yesterday night because of this... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheese Nip 2 Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Man, he had such a huge effect on Western Rock music. Without him there would be no "Within You Without You", no "Paint it Black", and the list goes on and on. He was truly great. May he rest in peace, playing that sitar up in the clouds:) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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