World music
superstar and Beatles inspiration Ravi Shankar has died at age 92. The master
of the sitar and father of singer Norah Jones, Shankar was dubbed the "godfather
of world music" by late Beatle George Harrison, who collaborated with
Shankar for the legendary 1971 benefit Concert For Bangladesh.
According to
reports, three-time Grammy winner Shankar died Tuesday at a hospital near his
home in Encinitas, California following heart valve replacement surgery last
week. In addition to Jones, Shankar was also the father of musician Anoushka
Shankar, a Grammy-nominated sitar player and composer.
George Harrison introduced "his" sitar
to Western music
Shankar became an icon of the hippie music
of the sixties because Beatle George Harrison was inspired by him. His
influence was heard in several songs from the Fab Four , which the Indian
classical music was introduced in the pop, rock and jazz. Shankar Harrison
called "the godfather of world music '.
Born Ravindra
Shankar Chowdhury in Varanasi, India, on April 7, 1920, Shankar (whose
shortened name means "sun") moved to Paris with his mother at age 10
to tour with his brother Uday's Indian dance troupe. Inspired by Indian
classical music, he then moved back to his native country at age 13 and studied
the sitar for seven years with his teacher, Allauddin Khan.
Mesmerized by his
fluid, improvisational playing of the sitar — a long-necked string instrument
that looks like an oversized lute — the Beatles were inspired to write the 1965
song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," on which George Harrison
played sitar. That song also began a lifelong friendship between Shankar and
late Beatle Harrison that lasted until Harrison's death in 2001.
Yet his
music is sometimes a mystery to the western listener. During the Concert for Bangladesh
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