Ravi Shankar, 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, and influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999.
Raga rock is rock or pop music with a pronounced Indian influence, either in its construction, its timbre, or its use of Indian musical instruments, such as the sitar and tabla. In addition, rock music from the 1960s and 1970s that incorporates South Asian musical influences and instruments, along with Western ideas of the Indian subcontinent, is often regarded as raga rock.
Indo jazz is a musical genre consisting of jazz, classical and Indian influences. Its structure and patterns are based on Indian music with typical jazz improvisation overlaid. While the term itself may be comparatively recent, the concept dates at least to the mid-1950s. Musicians including John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef and others reflect Indian influences.
The history of the sitar in jazz, that is the fusion of the sounds of Indian classical music with Western jazz, dates back from the late-1950s or early-1960s when musicians trained in Indian classical music such as Ravi Shankar started collaborating with jazz musicians such as Tony Scott and Bud Shank. Later jazz recordings containing sitar music include albums by Miles Davis, Alice Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, Joe Harriott ,and Ornette Coleman.
Raga is a 1971 documentary film about the life and music of Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, produced and directed by Howard Worth. It includes scenes featuring Western musicians Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison, as well as footage of Shankar returning to Maihar in central India, where as a young man he trained under the mentorship of Allauddin Khan. The film also features a portion of Shankar and tabla player Alla Rakha's acclaimed performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
The Bombay Jazz Palace is a compilation album released on CD in the UK by Outcaste Records on 28 January 2002. The fourteen tracks featured on the CD are all influenced by both traditional Indian music, and various species of jazz and funk. The majority of the album's music dates from the 1970s or late 60s, forming part of the Western counterculture's growing interest in Asian culture.
Ravi Shankar had numerous solo recordings published, including these:
"Why" is a song by the American rock band the Byrds, written by David Crosby and Jim McGuinn and first released as the B-side of the band's "Eight Miles High" single in March 1966. The song was re-recorded in December 1966 and released for a second time as part of the band's Younger Than Yesterday album.
Full Circle: Carnegie Hall 2000 is a live album by Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar, released in 2001 through the record label Angel Records. Recorded at Carnegie Hall in October 2000 as part of a tour with Shankar's daughter Anoushka, the album contains five tracks and presents two ragas. The concert occurred sixty-two years after Shankar's first performance at Carnegie Hall and commemorated his eightieth birthday; the album was his first live recording in nearly twenty years. Full Circle was produced by Hans Wendl, mastered by Scott Hull, and mixed and engineered by Tom Lazarus. Featured are performances by Tanmoy Bose and Bickram Ghosh on tabla, and Anoushka and Ravi on sitar.
Shankar Family & Friends is an album by Indian musician Ravi Shankar, recorded primarily in Los Angeles during the spring of 1973, but not released until late 1974. It was produced by Shankar's friend George Harrison and one of the first releases on the ex-Beatle's Dark Horse label. Out of print for many years, and much sought after as a result, the album was remastered in 2010 and reissued as part of the Ravi Shankar–George Harrison box set Collaborations.
Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India was an Indian classical music revue led by sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar intended for Western concert audiences and performed in 1974. Its presentation was the first project undertaken by the Material World Charitable Foundation, set up the previous year by ex-Beatle George Harrison. Long a champion of Indian music, Harrison also produced an eponymous studio album by the Music Festival orchestra, which was released in 1976 on his Dark Horse record label. Both the CD format of the Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India album and a DVD of their performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London were issued for the first time on the 2010 Shankar–Harrison box set Collaborations.
In Concert 1972 is a double live album by sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar and sarodiya Ali Akbar Khan, released in 1973 on Apple Records. It was recorded at the Philharmonic Hall, New York City, in October 1972, and is a noted example of the two Hindustani classical musicians' celebrated jugalbandi (duet) style of playing. With accompaniment from tabla player Alla Rakha, the performance reflects the two artists' sorrow at the recent death of their revered guru, and Khan's father, Allauddin Khan. The latter was responsible for many innovations in Indian music during the twentieth century, including the call-and-response dialogue that musicians such as Shankar, Khan and Rakha popularised among Western audiences in the 1960s.
"I Am Missing You" is a song by Indian musician Ravi Shankar, sung by his sister-in-law Lakshmi Shankar and released as the lead single from his 1974 album Shankar Family & Friends. The song is a rare Shankar composition in the Western pop genre, with English lyrics, and was written as a love song to the Hindu god Krishna. The recording was produced and arranged by George Harrison, in a style similar to Phil Spector's signature sound, and it was the first single issued on Harrison's Dark Horse record label. Other contributing musicians include Tom Scott, Nicky Hopkins, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr and Jim Keltner. A second version appears on Shankar Family & Friends, titled "I Am Missing You (Reprise)", featuring an arrangement closer to a folk ballad.
Tana Mana is an album by Indian musician Ravi Shankar, originally credited to "the Ravi Shankar Project" and released in 1987. The album is an experimental work by Shankar, mixing traditional instrumentation with 1980s electronic music and sampling technology. Shankar recorded much of Tana Mana in 1983 with sound effects innovator Frank Serafine, but it remained unreleased until Peter Baumann, head of new age record label Private Music, became attached to the project. The album title translates to mean "body and mind".
Ravi Shankar: In Celebration is a compilation box set by Indian classical musician and composer Ravi Shankar, released in 1996 on Angel Records in conjunction with Dark Horse Records. The four discs cover Shankar's international career, from the 1950s to the mid 1990s, and include recordings originally released on the World Pacific, HMV, Angel, Apple, Dark Horse and Private Music record labels. Shankar's friend George Harrison compiled and co-produced the set, which was issued as part of year-long celebrations for Shankar's 75th birthday.
Collaborations is a four-disc compilation box set by Indian classical musician Ravi Shankar and former Beatle George Harrison. Released in October 2010 on Dark Horse Records, it compiles two studio albums originally issued on that label – the long-unavailable Shankar Family & Friends (1974) and Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India (1976) – and Chants of India, first issued on Angel Records in 1997. Although all three albums were originally Shankar releases, for which Harrison served in the role of music producer and guest musician, both Shankar and Harrison are credited as artists on the box set. Each of the collaborative projects represents a departure from Shankar's more typical work as a sitarist and performer of Hindustani classical ragas, with the box set showcasing his forays into, variously, jazz and rock, Indian folk and orchestral ensembles, and devotional music.
Live: Ravi Shankar at the Monterey International Pop Festival is a live album by Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, released on the World Pacific record label in November 1967. It consists of part of Shankar's celebrated performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in California on 18 June 1967. Shankar was accompanied throughout by his regular tabla player, Alla Rakha, who performs a frenetic five-minute solo on the recording.
Ravi Shankar's Festival from India is a double album by Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar, released on World Pacific Records in December 1968. It contains studio recordings made by a large ensemble of performers, many of whom Shankar had brought to the United States from India. Among the musicians were Shivkumar Sharma, Jitendra Abhisheki, Palghat Raghu, Lakshmi Shankar, Aashish Khan and Alla Rakha. The project presented Indian classical music in an orchestral setting, so recalling Shankar's work as musical director of All India Radio in the years before he achieved international fame as a soloist during the 1960s.
Raga Rock is an album credited to "the Folkswingers featuring Harihar Rao", who was a Los Angeles-based Indian classical musician and ethnomusicologist. The album was released in June 1966 on the World Pacific record label. The title refers to the raga rock trend in popular music, as artists such as the Beatles, the Byrds, the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds had all begun incorporating Indian influences into their recent work. Led by the sitar playing of Rao, a longtime associate of Ravi Shankar, the album contains instrumental versions of several of these contemporary songs, including "Norwegian Wood", "Eight Miles High" and "Paint It Black". Other members of the Folkswingers for this release included jazz musicians such as Herb Ellis and Dennis Budimir, and members of the Los Angeles pool of session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew.
Shambhu Das is an Indian classical musician and educator. He is best known for his long association with Ravi Shankar, on whose behalf Das has acted as an ambassador for Indian music in Canada since the early 1970s, and his friendship with George Harrison of the Beatles, whom Das helped teach sitar in 1966. His assistance in Harrison's immersion in Indian culture helped inspire the Beatles' career direction and, due to the band's popularity and influence, the direction of the 1960s counterculture. In 1970, Das established the Indian Music Department at Toronto's York University, where he taught for four years.
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