“He became my teacher, my guru, and he really was terribly good at it.”
Anoushka Shankar
Introduction
One of the most beautiful musical sounds to hear is that of the unique and enchanting Indian instrument, the sitar. When played, you get lost in the music. The art of playing that few have managed to master to perfection. Yet Anoushka Shankar has now taken up the mantle, following in the footsteps of her father, Ravi Shankar, the greatest sitar player that the world has ever seen. Learning how to play the sitar from the man she calls her guru, this relationship between father and daughter is unique. Connected by blood, love and an undercurrent of communication, you can only achieve when playing music together. By age 14, the two were already touring together, and at 17, she released her first solo album. Anoushka even branched out into film, writing columns for Indian newspapers; she even wrote a biography of her father in 2002, Bapi: The Love of My Life.
A Modern Twist
Anoushka has brought Indian music into the modern age, assembling her band to accompany her unique music that has even branched out into a fusion of Indian music and Spanish flamenco on one album entitled Traveller. The inspiration comes from her Bohemian upbringing, which led to her birth from a brief relationship between her father and mother, Sukanya Rajan, when Ravi was 61. He also fathered another daughter, Norah Jones, who would become a renowned singer. The result of an affair with a New York concert promoter, Sue Jones. He also had a son who died in 1992, aged 50, from pneumonia. Anoushka grew up in a single-parent household in Willesden Green, north-west London, with her father just being a male figure in the background who visited the house several times a year. However, when she was seven, her parents decided to marry, and this influential figure, now 70, became her father when they moved to San Diego, California. Ravi began to teach her the instrument that would dominate their lives. She didn’t meet her sister Norah until she was 16 and Norah was 18. Norah didn’t get to know her father until his latter years. Yet Anoushka and Norah would go on to forge a deep sister relationship. Two sisters who would spend much of their time on the road in their separate music careers with a wealth of album sales and awards to follow. Ravi died in 2012 at 92, but his musical mastery lives on in his daughters.
