Manash (Subhaditya Edusoft): Pandit Ravi Shankar : Great musician, Goddess Saraswati (Hindu Goddess for Music, Knowledge, art) bestowed with immense talent to rule over World Music

Pandit Ravi Shankar : Great musician, even Goddess Saraswati (Hindu Goddess for Music, Knowledge, art) came down to earth to hear his Music. This Picture is created by Me in 3D Max Software

Ravi Shankar:

Pandit Ravi Shankar With His Sitar

Pandit Ravi Shankar , name closely associated with Indian Classical Music. He become the Idol and True face of Indian Classical Music throughout the world.

Pandit Ravi Shankar

Shankar was born 7 April 1920 in Varanasi to a Bengali Brahmin family as the youngest of seven brothers.Shankar's Bengali birth name was Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury. His father, Shyam Shankar, a Middle Temple barrister and scholar who served as dewan of Jhalawar, used the Sanskrit spelling of the family name and removed its last part

His Unique and intense life story is associated with the world of Indian Classical music and dance in every aspects.

Choreographer and Great Dance Uday Shankar brother of Ravi Shankar

In early part of his life At the age of ten, after spending his first decade in Varanasi, Shankar went to Paris with the dance group of his brother, choreographer Uday Shankar. This Tour open his mind toward the world music like Western classical music, jazz, and cinema, and became acquainted with Western customs.

Ravi Shankar With his Brother Dance troupe

This tour create a firm foundation and determine the path of his future destiny of his later life and career.

Shankar's parents had died by the time he returned from the European tour, and touring the West had become difficult due to political conflicts that would lead to World War II. Shankar gave up his dancing career. In 1938 to go to Maihar and study Indian classical music as Allauddin Khan`s pupil, living with his family in the traditional gurukul system.

Allauddin Khan

Allauddin Khan was a rigorous teacher and Shankar had training on sitar and surbahar, learned ragas and the musical styles dhrupad, dhamar, and khyal, and was taught the techniques of the instruments rudra veena, rubab, and sursingar. Under the Guidance of great guru Allauddin Khan great musical talent of Ravi Shankar blossomed to its highest extent.

Ravi Shankar With Ali Akbar Khan

Shankar completed his training in 1944 . Following his training, he moved to Mumbai and joined the Indian People's Theatre Association, for whom he composed music for ballets in 1945 and 1946. Shankar recomposed the music for the popular song "Sare Jahan Se Achcha" at the age of 25. He began to record music for HMV India and worked as a music director for All India Radio (AIR), New Delhi, from February 1949 to January 1956. Shankar founded the Indian National Orchestra at AIR and composed for it; in his compositions he combined Western and classical Indian instrumentation.Beginning in the mid-1950s he composed the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, which became internationally acclaimed.

Ravi Shankar With Satyajit Ray and Soumitra Chatterjee during music direction of Movie named Apu Trilogy

Pandit Ravi Shankar was introduced to the West (and vice versa) via ,His performances with Yehudi Menuhin and his association with George Harrison of the Beatles were primarily responsible for bringing Indian music to a broad Western audience.

Ravi Shankar with Yehudi Menuhin

George Harrison, U.S. President Gerald Ford, and Ravi Shankar in the Oval Office in December 1974

In the 1930s, when he was a mere teenager, he was already appearing on the great stages of the world, from New York's Carnegie Hall to Paris's Thêatre du Champs-Elysées, as a dancer and musician in his brother Uday's troupe of "Hindu Dancers and Musicians," while his father taught at New York's Columbia University. Even in those early days, the family troupe earned the admiration of the great artists of the period, ranging from ballerina and choreographer Anna Pavlova to author James Joyce. In that period of extended living in Europe and the United States, Ravi Shankar and his family came to hear the constellation of musical stars of the day, like Jascha Heifetz, Arturo Toscanini, Pablo Casals, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway.

Through the great knowledge over Western music Pandit Ravi Shankar reinvented the Indian age old ancient music in unique fusion form and presented it beautifully to the world.

Albums and books on Ravi Shankar

In 1962, he released the jazz-influenced album Improvisations with Bud Shank. He also instructed horn player Don Ellis and jazz saxophonist John Coltrane in Indian music, leading to Coltrane's modal experimentation on several groundbreaking jazz albums of the 1960s. Shankar also contributed his composition Rich a la Rakha to jazz drummer Buddy Rich and tabla player Alla Rakha and Zakir Hussain

Ravi Shankar With Zakir Hussain

In 1989, he toured Europe and India with Zubin Mehta and the European Youth Orchestra. Shankar also composed and performed in a musical theater piece, Ghanashyam, in Britain in 1989 and India in 1991, and collaborated with Phillip Glass on Passages in 1990.
Even into the new millenium, he continued to write, perform, and tour.

Ghanashyam Album of Ravi Shankar

During this time when Ravi Shankar came to Calcutta and Performed his unique and extraordinary musical theater piece, Ghanashyam, at Birla Sabhaghar, Calcutta, I had a oppurtunity to listened and saw him live, its a great experience for me to cherish it for lifetime, from that day I knew the cause of his great position to the Indian as well as World Music.

His Works and Awards:

He has recorded more than 40 studio and live albums over a staggering six decades with the first published in 1956, titled Three Ragas. Other notable albums of Ravi Shankar include: Ragas & Talas, 1964; West Meets East, 1967; In Celebration, 1995; and Full Circle/Carnegie Hall, 2001.

Friends and Family of Ravi Shankar

He has picked up numerous Grammy awards, including Best World Music album for Full Circle/Carnegie Hall 2000, and awarded the Music Council UNESCO award 1975. Also, winner of the Polar Music Prize 1998, which is regarded as one of the most esteemed prizes in the music world and given to those with outstanding achievements, with music legends Paul McCartney, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, and Pink Floyd been accredited with this.

He has received many honouree doctorates from universities around the world, together with being an honouree member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was awarded a CBE (Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2001.

In his native continent he was awarded India’s highest civil honour called the Bharat Ratna, which means Jewell of India, and has received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize 1991, an award established in Japan to honour the outstanding work of people in conserving Asian culture.

Personal life and family:

Allauddin Khan's daughter Annapurna Devi

Shankar married Allauddin Khan's daughter Annapurna Devi in 1941 and a son, Shubhendra Shankar, was born in 1942.

Ravi Shankar with Annapurna Devi

Shankar separated from Devi during the 1940s and had a relationship with Kamala Shastri, a dancer, beginning in the late 1940s. An affair with Sue Jones, a New York concert producer, led to the birth of Norah Jones in 1979. In 1981, Anoushka Shankar was born to Shankar and Sukanya Rajan, whom Shankar had known since the 1970s.After separating from Kamala Shastri in 1981, Shankar lived with Sue Jones until 1986. He married Sukanya Rajan in 1989.

Ravi Shankar married with Sukanya Rajan in 1989.

Shubhendra "Shubho" Shankar often accompanied his father on tours. He could play the sitar and surbahar, but elected not to pursue a solo career and died in 1992.

Ravi Shankar and Norah Jones

Norah Jones became a successful musician in the 2000s, winning eight Grammy Awards in 2003. Anoushka Shankar was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best World Music Album in 2003.