Ravi Shankar (natural April 7, 1920) is a Bengali-Indian musician best known for his virtuosity on the sitar. The adherent of Baba Allauddin Khan (founder of the Maihar gharana of Indian classical music), Pandit Ravi Shankar is arguably the right-known Indian musician. He experienced besides danced inside his older brother Uday Shankar's dance troupe.

Ravi Shankar was easily known outside of India, performing inside major cases like a Royal Festival & Edinburgh Festival whilst George Harrison, a member of The Beatles, began experimenting with a sitar within 1965. Them yet met due to this most common interest & became close friends, & that successively expanded Shankar's fame when a popular star & as Harrison's wise man.

This development greatly expanded his career. He was invited to play venues that were unusual for a definitive musician, like the 1967 Monterey Music Festival in Monterey, California. He was too one of a creative person world health organization performed at a Woodstock Festival (1969) or The Concert for Bangladesh (1971).

In the hike to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district after performing inside Monterey, Shankar wrote "I felt offended and shocked to see India being regarded so superficially and its great culture being exploited. Yoga, Tantra, mantra, kundalini, ganja, hashish, Kama Sutra? They all became part of a cocktail that everyone seemed to be lapping up!".

Shankar has written ii concertos for sitar and orchestra, violin-sitar compositions for Yehudi Menuhin and himself, music for flute virtuoso Jean Pierre Rampal, and music for Hozan Yamamoto, master of the shakuhachi (Japanese flute), and koto virtuoso Musumi Miyashita. He has composed extensively for films & ballets in India, Canada, Europe and the United States, including Chappaqua, Charly, Gandhi, and a Apu Trilogy. His recording "Tana Mana", freed on a Personal Music label around 1987, penetrated the New Age genre by having its unique combination of traditional instruments with electronics. A authoritative composer Philip Glass acknowledges Shankar as a major influence, and them collaborated to create Passages, a recording of compositions where for each one reworks themes composed per more.

Shankar is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is a member of the United Nations International Rostrum of composers. He has received numbers of awards & honours from either either his have united states & from 100% on top the world, including xiv honorary doctorates, the Padma Vibhushan, Desikottam, the Magsaysay Award from Manila, two Grammys, a Fukuoka Gr& Prize from either either Japan, and the Crystal Award from Davos with the title "Global Ambassador", to title however occasionally. Around 1986 he was nominative member of the Rajya Sabha, India's upper house of Parliament. Inside 2002, he was conferred the maiden Indian Chamber of Comerce Lifetime Achievement Award.

These are interesting to note that Indian music critics believe a Sitar might never healthy better than it did in the mitts of Vilayat Khan. Likewise to assume a fact that for sheer touch & control on a frets, the late Nikhil Bannerjee was much ticket the performing artist than he has run credit for. However neither one players experienced that quality of cosmopolitanism, which marks Ravi Shankar's personality. A Bharat Ratna was awarded to him in 1999 because he has been both: the musician & the musical ambassador.

Shankar presently lives inside Encinitas, California. He has been married many days. He is the uncle of the late sitarist Ananda Shankar, and his girl Anoushka Shankar (who performs by owning him) & Grammy winner Norah Jones are also musicians, though Norah has succeeded by herself, non getting got any email by having Shankar the least bit. He paved a way for numerous Indian musicians to have a platform to perform outside of India. Since so, Shankar has maintained the sweetheart & acclaimed career as a musician & recording creative person.

Films
Raga (1971). Directed by Howard Worth.