Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Ravi Shankar, RIP

Krishna and Radha in the Moonlight, 18th century Mughal miniature






3 comments:

JCF said...

Memory eternal.

rick allen said...

Ravi Shankar was such an eye-opener for me, one of those early intimations to a Texas kid that the world was much bigger than I imagined. I saw him in the mid '70's with George Harrison in Fort Worth on what was called the Dark Horse tour. George's voice was totally shot at the time, but Shankar's performance was pretty unforgettable.

For years I kept an old record called "Raga," the soundtrack of a film producted by George Harrison about Shankar and Indian music. I was never able to find it on CD, and, having given my turntable to my son, could never do much but look at the cover art until I learned that the old film was out on DVD. It's certainly worth seeing, both for its depiction of Shankar's sometimes-uncomfortable relationship to the American counter-culture, and for some remarkable performances, such as a sitar/violin duet with Yehudi Menuhin in one of the East Meets West concerts.

Counterlight said...

I bought a Ravi Shankar album back in my teen days in Dallas, and fell in love with his music. He wrote and performed the film score to one of my favorite movies, Pather Panchali by Satyajit Ray, whose movies seem to be forgotten now in the Bollywood glitz of rising economic power India.