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Monday, December 24, 2012
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The Hindu : News / National : Spiritual he may have been, but spoke strongly against communalism
The Hindu : News / National : Spiritual he may have been, but spoke strongly against communalism:
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Spiritual he may have been, but spoke strongly against communalism
Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar may be known for bringing the raga to the West, but he also leaves behind a legacy of social and political engagement within India and throughout the world.
“Ravi Shankar was a shining example of India’s composite culture and was a vocal critic of groups who were seeking to divide and define us on communal lines,” says Ram Rahman, a founding member of the artist activist collective SAHMAT.
As Ravi Shankar’s early musical career took shape, so did his alignment with progressive politics: “He was an important part of the great moment of the progressive movement in the 1940s,” says the SAHMAT statement.
The maestro penned musical scores for films like “Dharti Ke Lal,” about the Bengal famine, and Chetan Anand’s “Neecha Nagar”, a pioneering effort in socially realistic cinema a decade before scoring the soundtrack for Satyajit Ray’s acclaimed “Pather Panchali”.
Ravi Shankar also composed music for the communist-affiliated Indian People’s Theatre Association which “had a huge impact in shaping modernism in the arts,” according to the statement.
In 1971, he and Harrison pioneered the rock for relief format— now so commonplace as to be almost cliché — with the “Concert for Bangladesh” held in New York to raise money for refugees fleeing from the civil war in East Pakistan to India. Shankar’s brother-in-law Ali Akbar Khan, along with rockers Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Ringo Starr joined the benefit; together, the Eastern and Western musicians raised millions of dollars for UNICEF.
With the clouds of communalism darkening the horizon in the years before the Babri Masjid demolition, he was a critic of groups seeking to divide the country on religious lines, taking part in SAHMAT’s “Artists against Communalism” programmes in Delhi and Bombay in 1991 and 1992.
Describing himself as a “sensitive musician”, he expressed his anguish at the increasing communal divide: “This discordant cacophony has to stop. It is the duty of all of us to try our best in our own way to bring back harmony amongst our people.”
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The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : My Guru Pandit Ravi Shankar, my father and I
The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : My Guru Pandit Ravi Shankar, my father and I:
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My Guru Pandit Ravi Shankar, my father and I
LESSON ONE: Every single day was a learning experience — right from my first lesson in 1973 in Mysore, to the nine years of living and learning with him from 1984 onwards, to the numerous concerts I played with him. Photo: Shubhendra Rao
Like a true teacher, he taught me not just about music but about life too
It fills me with great sadness that I have to write this tribute today to my Guru, Pandit Ravi Shankar. With his demise, an era has come to an end. The last of the legends of that generation is no longer physically with us. But artists like Ravi Shankar never die because they will live on through their music. Millions of people across the world have been deeply influenced by this charismatic genius who was always way ahead of his time, and they will continue to be.
I was fortunate to be born into a family where my Guru was worshipped as God. My father, the late N.R. Rama Rao, was one of his earliest disciples — from the late 1940s, when this legend himself was in his twenties. Their close bonding asguru and shishya is still spoken about in music circles as “Ram bhakt Hanuman, Ravi bhakt Rao.”
My father, his shishya
My father was the epitome of a perfect shishya and I grew up with lots of stories of their beautiful relationship. Father sitting behind on a bicycle with the sitar and Guruji riding the bicycle to All India Radio for his work; father listening to hours of Guruji’s practice sessions with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Annapurnaji as he gave accompaniment on the tanpura; about the festive atmosphere that would set in weeks before Guruji arrived at my hometown, Bangalore.
They shared a beautiful relationship, one that continued until my father’s death due to Alzheimer’s disease in 2004. I remember the time Guruji went all the way to Bangalore to see him one last time. By then the disease was in a very advanced stage but the one person who my father could still recognise was his guru.
Even in the last few months, when, for all practical purposes, my father was not in this world and unable to recognise his wife and children, there was only one thing that could bring a semblance of a response from him — his guru’s music. We could detect some movement in his eyes and his fingers would start moving involuntarily.
Surely, the world knows Guruji as one of the greatest musicians and countless articles have been written about him for decades. Aside from the music I was privileged to learn from him; I was fortunate to see the human side of this great artist as well. His childlike enthusiasm to learn and live life to the fullest, his humility, and his humour — like a true “guru,” he taught me not just music but about life itself.
Every single day was a learning experience — right from my first lesson in 1973 in Mysore (where he taught me Raga Bhairav), to the nine years of living and learning with him from 1984 onwards, to the numerous concerts I played with him.
Despite his tight schedule during the two weeks in Mumbai in 1982 when he was working with Richard Attenborough composing music for the film “Gandhi,” he would teach me for three to four hours in the morning before going to the studio.
The Asian Games
In late 1983, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave Guruji a house in New Delhi’s Lodi Estate (where senior government officers live) as a token of appreciation for the music he had composed for the Asian Games.
At that point in his life, he wanted to spend more time in India and asked me to move to Delhi. The nine years that followed in the guru-shishya parampara are the foundation of my life. I learnt from him not just music or raga and tala but how to be a complete artist and to live the life of my music. For him, music was always a spiritual quest and I found this in every raga that he performed. He was the perfectnaad yogi.
I will never forget two of his blessings — the first was when his wife organised a surprise party to celebrate my wedding to Saskia as they could not attend the wedding in Bangalore; the second, when he visited the hospital a day after my son was born. Taking Ishaan in his arms, he said that he was only the second two-day old baby that he had held apart from his own son, Shubhendra Shankar (after whom my parents named me).
Last year, when I visited him at his home in California after finishing my U.S. tour, he told me, “Beta, I feel bad I could not give you enough time when I had to because I was busy with my concerts and tours. Now I have the time and want to give you everything that I have, but you don’t have the time because you are busy with your own concerts. I am really happy that you are doing well and my blessings are always with you.”
For sure, I will feel the void his passing has left, but I know he is always with me. His smile, his mesmerising eyes, his easy sense of humour, his passion for life and most important, his music will always live with me all my life.
(Shubhendra Rao, a disciple of Ravi Shankar, is a leading sitar artist and composer. Email:sitar@shubhendrarao.com)
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The Hindu : News / National : The illustrious ‘other’ who faded into the shadows
The Hindu : News / National : The illustrious ‘other’ who faded into the shadows:
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The illustrious ‘other’ who faded into the shadows
The Hindu ArchivesMusical legacy Baba Allauddin Khan with daughter Annapurna Devi.
In a world that has become used to packaged messages and instant communication, subtleties often fall by the wayside. Perhaps it is only natural then, that images generated by popular media — films, television, pulp fiction – are the ones that dominate our perception, be it of events, people or relationships. One such much discussed relationship was that of Pandit Ravi Shankar and his first wife, surbahar maestro Annapurna Devi, who lives in Mumbai.
Those not closely involved with classical music feel that the cause of the couple’s estrangement was professional rivalry, while those versed in the subject have more specific views. Most conclude that, given the usual complex relationship of a performing couple, and the popularly held view that her talent was greater than his, the husband’s jealousy must have been behind the rift. While Annapurna has steadfastly maintained silence on the details, even in the authorised biography — “An Unheard Melody: Annapurna Devi” (Roli) — by Swapan Kumar Bondyopadhyay, Shankar has been more open in his autobiography, mentioning her fiery temper and his equal propensity to flare up at that early age.
Having married Ravi Shankar when he was about 21 and she 14-15, she did perform surbahar-sitar duets with him a few times. The marriage did not last, however. She was not by his side when Ravi Shankar travelled around the world; his sitar concerts were a rage in the U.S. or when he performed at the iconic Woodstock Festival in 1969.
Bondyopadhyay’s book goes so far as to say Annapurna told him she will take to her grave the real reason for her withdrawing from public recitals.
Without much clarity on these issues, the image of Annapurna Devi as an unsung genius whose voice is muffled by a patriarchal society remains a picture without shades and subtleties. So there are other images worth considering.
Like her illustrious father ‘Baba’ Allauddin Khan, Annapurna Devi has proved a tremendous guru and groomed disciples like flute maestro Hariprasad Chaurasia and the late sitarist Pandit Nikhil Banerjee. Other acknowledged masters who blossomed under her tutelage include Pandit Nityanand Haldipur, Basant Kabra, Aashish Khan (son of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan), Ustad Bahadur Khan and Sudhir Phadke, besides her son the late Shubhendra Shankar.
Annapurna Devi exhibited in her music — so goes one version of the musical legend — a far greater proof of the genius of her father and guru than Ravi Shankar, or even her brother Ali Akbar Khan. Perhaps in addition to her prodigious knowledge of music — or as a result of it — she also developed a soulful, spiritual approach that has rendered her immune to the temptations of adulating crowds.
For over five decades now, she has been known as a reclusive if brilliant musician who refuses to perform in public, doesn’t record, receives hardly any visitors and takes only a few privileged students. Shankar, on the other hand, continued to garner musical fame and glory till his very last days, performing even after age and ill-health diminished his stamina and he had to use a sitar custom-made to suit his requirements.
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