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

Ravi Shankar - phillip Glass : Passages 1990

RAVI SHANKAR

Ravi Shankar (7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012), born Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury, his name often preceded by the title Pandit (Master) and "Sitar maestro", was an Indian musician and a composer of Hindustani classical music. He was the best-known proponent of the sitar in the second half of the 20th century and influenced many other musicians throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna in 1999.

Shankar was born to a Bengali Brahmin family in India, and spent his youth touring India and Europe with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. He gave up dancing in 1938 to study sitar playing under court musician Allauddin Khan.

After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956.

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.

Shankar performed a well-received set at the Monterey Pop Festival. He performed at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969, and found he disliked the venue.

PHILLIP GLASS

Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937 is an American composer. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been described as minimal music, having similar qualities to other "minimalist" composers such as La Monte Young, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley.

Glass describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped evolve stylistically.

Glass founded the Philip Glass Ensemble, with which he still performs on keyboards. He has written numerous operas and musical theatre works, twelve symphonies, eleven concertos, eight string quartets and various other chamber music, and film scores.

Three of his film scores have been nominated for Academy Awards.

PASSAGES

Passages is a collaborative chamber music studio album co-composed by Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass, released in 1990 through Atlantic Records. Consisting of arrangements by each of the composers around themes written by the other, the album's content is a hybrid of Hindustani classical music and Glass' distinct American minimal contemporary classical style. The album reached a peak position of number three on Billboard's Top World Music Albums chart.

TRACKS

1. "Offering" (Ravi Shankar)– 9:47
2. "Sadhanipa" (Philip Glass) – 8:37
3. "Channels and Winds" (Glass) – 8:00
4. "Ragas in Minor Scale" (Glass) – 7:37
5. "Meetings Along the Edge" (Shankar) – 8:11
6. "Prashanti" (Shankar) – 13:40

Take it Flac Here

Ravi Shankar : Bridges - The Best Of Flac & MP3 2001

Ravi Shankar (Bengali: born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury on 7 April 1920), is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar.

In 1956, he began to tour Europe and America playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison of The Beatles. Shankar engaged Western music by writing concerti for sitar and orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1966, Shankar met and became friends with George Harrison, the guitarist of the Beatles.

The Beatles first employed a sitar accompaniment on the song "Norwegian Wood."
Soon, other rock groups such as "The Butterfield Blues Band" and "The Byrds" were displaying Indian influences.

George Harrison met Shankar in London in 1966 and visited India for six weeks to study sitar under Shankar in Srinagar.

Shankar's appearances at both "The Monterey Pop" and "Woodstock" festivals increased his popularity among Western youth. But Woodstock's audience mistakenly applauded him for tuning his instrument, and, with the exception of the Concert for Bangladesh, Shankar refused to perform at other pop music festivals.

The Indian music genius Ravi Shankar was for sure someone very special for the Woodstock festival. He made his first appearance to the western world at" the Monterey International Pop Festival " in 1967, followed by an invitation from Beatle George Harrison. In the wake of spiritualism and the search for new influences his music became very popular but Shankar wasn't fond of the drug-consuming and partying crowd of young people.

Ravi Shankar's music isn't the usual blues, folk or psychedelic rock music that one expects from such a festival. This traditional Indian music, adapted by Ravi Shankar and Ustad Alla Rakha, needs carful listening and openness for different and unknown kinds of rhythms and melodies.

In 1974, Shankar toured the United States with Harrison. Harrison produced two of Shankar's albums in the first half of the 1970s and described his friend as "the godfather of world music."

In 1989, he toured Europe and India with Zubin Mehta and the European Youth Orchestra. Shankar also composed and performed in a musical theater piece, Ghanashyam, in Britain in 1989 and India in 1991, and collaborated with "Phillip Glass" on Passages in 1990.
Even into the new millenium, he continued to write, perform, and tour.

This album have the title "The Best" . But I don't think so .
For my oppinion the greatest albums of Ravi Shankar are :

-Sounds Of India
-Genius Of Ravi Shankar
(And I think that are available only in rare LP's)

I had them once , but I left them in Italy , when I was a student at Bologna University in the '80's . ( Too much stuff , too much trips - I don't remember , I don't recall )

Tracks

1 Sandhya Raga 11:22
2 Chase 2:18
3 West Eats Meat 6:08
4 Ragas In Minor Scale 7:32
5 Tarana 5:37
6 Tana Mana 3:38
7 Sadhanipa 8:31
8 Friar Park 5:54
9 Reunion 4:15
10 Prashanti 13:37
11 Shanti-Mantra 6:49

Take it Flac HERE