He's Finally Gone. Rest Easy Ravi Shankar.

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survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 12, 2012 - 01:23am PT
Saw him play a couple times. Unbelievable how great he was.


With an instrument perplexing to most Westerners, Ravi Shankar helped connect the world through music. The sitar virtuoso hobnobbed with the Beatles, became a hippie musical icon and spearheaded the first rock benefit concert as he introduced traditional Indian ragas to Western audiences over a nearly century-long career.

From George Harrison to John Coltrane, from Yehudi Menuhin to David Crosby, his connections reflected music's universality, though a gap persisted between Shankar and many Western fans. Sometimes they mistook tuning for tunes, while he stood aghast at displays like Jimi Hendrix's burning guitar.

Shankar died Tuesday at age 92. A statement on his website said he died in San Diego, near his Southern California home. The musician's foundation issued a statement saying that he had suffered upper respiratory and heart problems and had undergone heart-valve replacement surgery last week.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also confirmed Shankar's death and called him a "national treasure."

Labeled "the godfather of world music" by Harrison, Shankar helped millions of classical, jazz and rock lovers discover the centuries-old traditions of Indian music.

"He was legend of legends," Shivkumar Sharma, a noted santoor player who performed with Shankar, told Indian media. "Indian classical was not at all known in the Western world. He was the musician who had that training ... the ability to communicate with the Western audience."









survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2012 - 01:27am PT
Born April 7, 1920. Almost the same as my Dad.


He also pioneered the concept of the rock benefit with the 1971 Concert For Bangladesh. To later generations, he was known as the estranged father of popular American singer Norah Jones.

His last musical performance was with his other daughter, sitarist Anoushka Shankar Wright, on Nov. 4 in Long Beach, California; his foundation said it was to celebrate his 10th decade of creating music. The multiple Grammy winner learned that he had again been nominated for the award the night before his surgery.

"It's one of the biggest losses for the music world," said Kartic Seshadri, a Shankar protege, sitar virtuoso and music professor at the University of California, San Diego. "There's nothing more to be said."

As early as the 1950s, Shankar began collaborating with and teaching some of the greats of Western music, including violinist Menuhin and jazz saxophonist Coltrane. He played well-received shows in concert halls in Europe and the United States, but faced a constant struggle to bridge the musical gap between the West and the East.

Describing an early Shankar tour in 1957, Time magazine said. "U.S. audiences were receptive but occasionally puzzled."

His close relationship with Harrison, the Beatles lead guitarist, shot Shankar to global stardom in the 1960s.







Delhi Dog

climber
Good Question...
Dec 12, 2012 - 01:28am PT
He sure left a lot to the world, including his very talented and very beautiful daughter.

Happy Trails
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2012 - 01:29am PT
Daughter..S!! Heh heh.



Harrison had grown fascinated with the sitar, a long-necked string instrument that uses a bulbous gourd for its resonating chamber and resembles a giant lute. He played the instrument, with a Western tuning, on the song "Norwegian Wood," but soon sought out Shankar, already a musical icon in India, to teach him to play it properly.

The pair spent weeks together, starting the lessons at Harrison's house in England and then moving to a houseboat in Kashmir and later to California.

Gaining confidence with the complex instrument, Harrison recorded the Indian-inspired song "Within You Without You" on the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," helping spark the raga-rock phase of 60s music and drawing increasing attention to Shankar and his work.

Shankar's popularity exploded, and he soon found himself playing on bills with some of the top rock musicians of the era. He played a four-hour set at the Monterey Pop Festival and the opening day of Woodstock.

Though the audience for his music had hugely expanded, Shankar, a serious, disciplined traditionalist who had played Carnegie Hall, chafed against the drug use and rebelliousness of the hippie culture.

"I was shocked to see people dressing so flamboyantly. They were all stoned. To me, it was a new world," Shankar told Rolling Stone of the Monterey festival.

While he enjoyed Otis Redding and the Mamas and the Papas at the festival, he was horrified when Hendrix lit his guitar on fire.

"That was too much for me. In our culture, we have such respect for musical instruments, they are like part of God," he said.






Delhi Dog

climber
Good Question...
Dec 12, 2012 - 01:33am PT
Daughters yes though I've only met one. Anoushka can sure play. Never seen Norah before other than in print.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2012 - 01:34am PT
Yer a lucky man DD. I got an autograph for my son who is an Indian Classical freak, and a pretty good Tabla player.


[Click to View YouTube Video]
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2012 - 01:39am PT
In 1971, moved by the plight of millions of refugees fleeing into India to escape the war in Bangladesh, Shankar reached out to Harrison to see what they could do to help.

In what Shankar later described as "one of the most moving and intense musical experiences of the century," the pair organized two benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden that included Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr.

The concert, which spawned an album and a film, raised millions of dollars for UNICEF and inspired other rock benefits, including the 1985 Live Aid concert to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia and the 2010 Hope For Haiti Now telethon.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 12, 2012 - 02:28am PT
The man was awesomeness.
Fletcher

Trad climber
The rock doesn't care what I think
Dec 12, 2012 - 02:30am PT
Yeah, what an impact. Even if you never had heard of him, you hear his influences in some way probably every day in some aspect of music, popular and otherwise.

Of course, in our house, we hear a lot of traditional sitar here, since my wife has propagated a phrase I once said years ago, "We now return to our regularly scheduled yoga music." :-)

RIP

Eric
Jan

Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
Dec 12, 2012 - 02:49am PT
Indeed the passing of an era. Shankar was certainly my introduction to Indian music.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2012 - 03:45am PT
Check out the name of his wife.

His 1941 marriage to Baba Allaudin Khan's daughter, Annapurna Devi, ended in divorce. Though he had a decades-long relationship with dancer Kamala Shastri that ended in 1981, he had relationships with several other women in the 1970s.
Delhi Dog

climber
Good Question...
Dec 12, 2012 - 03:59am PT
Norah with Gillian and David
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMkxrS_eXzY

Anoushka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CnhcGpmH9Y

and a younger Ravi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gWCiLexilY

For most Westerners he was the Indian sound...probably still is
Fish Finder

Social climber
THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART
Dec 12, 2012 - 04:07am PT



There is something magical , mysterious and captivating about the sitar,

He was the MASTER! RIP
cowpoke

climber
Dec 12, 2012 - 08:57am PT
nice piece honoring Shankar on npr this morning
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Dec 12, 2012 - 09:15am PT
http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/12/12/167019577/ravi-shankar-who-brought-eastern-music-to-western-legends-dies
Tony Bird

climber
Northridge, CA
Dec 12, 2012 - 09:22am PT
the sitar is an amazing musical machine. shankar opened so many ears to that.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2012 - 11:22am PT
Those are great links DD and Nature.

When I saw him, he did a whole little speech about the spirituality of the music and how to be respectful to it.

But he did it without being preachy. It was wonderful.

My son still has that autograph....
mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Dec 12, 2012 - 11:40am PT
"He has more cousins than any man in show business."--Joel Nixon, bassist

http://www.facebook.com/gurujicodes?ref=ts&fref=ts

Find the love you seek, by first finding the love within yourself. Learn to rest in that place within you that is your true home.

Pop changes week to week and month to month. but great music is like literature.

In our culture we have such respect for musical instruments they are like part of God.

--Ravi Shankar

edit: Moved from the other thread to here.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2012 - 11:47am PT
Whoa. DD, the way Anoushka is playing after about the 8 minute mark...buckets of awesome.

She played with Ravi when I saw him but she was playing Tambura rather than Sitar.
Fletcher

Trad climber
The rock doesn't care what I think
Dec 12, 2012 - 12:29pm PT
Great improvisation session with his daughter in this video. Builds slowly and then.... WOW!

http://blog.onbeing.org/post/37782792836/trentgilliss-another-musical-legend-has-passed

[Click to View YouTube Video]

Eric

Edit: I swear I was from the sub-continent in several hundred previous lives!
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2012 - 12:35pm PT
Edit: I swear I was from the sub-continent in several hundred previous lives!


HA!! Whoa, don't we all feel like that sometimes? ;0)
philo

Trad climber
Is that light the end of the tunnel or a train?
Dec 12, 2012 - 01:11pm PT
Rest in Peace Great One. The world is a lessened place. You will be remembered.
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