Ravi Shankar: The Sounds Of India 1960

 

Ravi Shankar, in full Ravindra Shankar Chowdhury, (born April 7, 1920, Benares [now Varanasi], India—died December 11, 2012, San Diego, California, U.S.), Indian musician, player of the sitar, composer, and founder of the National Orchestra of India, who was influential in stimulating Western appreciation of Indian music.
                                                                                 

                                                                            
Born into a Bengali Brahman (highest social class in Hindu tradition) family, Shankar spent most of his

youth studying music and dance and touring extensively in India and Europe with his brother Uday’s dance troupe. At age 18 Shankar gave up dancing, and for the next seven years he studied the sitar (a long-necked stringed instrument of the lute family) under the noted musician Ustad Allauddin Khan. After serving as music director of All-India Radio from 1948 until 1956, he began a series of European and American tours.
                                                                     

                                                                     
In 1956, Shankar began to tour Europe and the Americas playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison.
                                                                 

                                                                            
Having performed at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, Woodstock was the last rock festival Shankar played, as he subsequently distanced himself from the 1960s hippie movement.
                                                                             

                                                                               
His influence on Harrison helped popularize the use of Indian instruments in Western pop music in the latter half of the 1960s. Shankar engaged Western music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra, and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992, he served as a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Parliament of India. He continued to perform until the end of his life.
                                                                                 

                                                                             
In the course of his long career, Shankar became the world’s best-known exponent of Hindustani (North

Indian) classical music, performing with India’s most-distinguished percussionists and making dozens of successful recordings. Shankar composed the film scores for the Indian director Satyajit Ray’s famous Apu trilogy (1955–59). In 1962 he founded the Kinnara School of Music in Bombay (now Mumbai) and then established a second Kinnara School in Los Angeles in 1967; he closed both schools some years later, however, having become disenchanted with institutional teaching.
                                                                

                                                                            
The Sounds of India is an album by Ravi Shankar which introduces and explains Hindustani classical music to Western audiences. Released by Columbia Records in 1958, it was influenced by Ali Akbar Khan's The Sounds of India, and recorded and produced by George Avakian in 1957 at Columbia's New York studio.
It is regarded today as being of historical interest for showing both Shankar's musical skills and his interest in teaching the West about classical Indian music.
                                                                        

                                                                                  
It was digitally remastered and released in CD format by Columbia Records in 1989. This album as a

useful historical document for both "Shankar's amazing abilities" and his love for teaching Western listeners about Hindustani classical music by using short lessons before each performance. Yoshi Kato, in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, feels that as Shankar was already familiar to Western audiences, particularly via the interest shown by George Harrison, he was "the perfect musical ambassador", and this album is an "excellent way" into Shankar's music.
                                                                    

                                                                       
For Christian Larrède, writing in Music Story, the album "reste une curiosité" (remains a curiosity), and the short lengths of the chosen music along with the spoken introductions "ne souffrent pas de l’entreprise ouvertement pédagogique" (do not [cause the album to] suffer from the obvious educational enterprise).
                                                             

                                                                              
This 1960s classic is a perfect introduction not only to Ravi Shankar's brilliant work on the sitar, but also to classical Indian music in general. Shankar offers brief, informative explanations of Indian ragas, scales, rhythms, song structures, and time signatures to set the stage for each spiritual piece. Overall, classical Indian music is diverse and complex, but The Sounds of India simplifies it beautifully for those interested in exploring it and its greatest ambassador.
                                                                           

                                                                           

TRACKS

01. An Introduction to Indian Music   4:13
02. Dádrá   10:30
03. Máru-Bihág   11:44
04. Bhimpalási   12:13
05. Sindhi-Bhairavi   15:00

Personnel

Ravi Shankar – sitar
Chatur Lal – tabla
N.C. Mullick – tambura

MP3 @ 320 Size: 123 MB                              Flac  Size: 230 MB

Ravi Shankar in this Blog HERE