Ravi Shankar (7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist and composer. A maestro of the sitar, he became one of the world’s most prominent exporters of North Indian classical music in the late 20th century, influencing many musicians in India and around the world. Shankar was awarded India’s highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999.
Born into a Brahmin family in Bengal, India, Shankar spent his adolescence as a dancer, touring India and Europe with his brother Uday Shankar’s dance company. In 1938, he quit dancing to study with court musician Alauddin Khan and learn to play the sitar. After completing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, composing the music for Satyajit Ray’s Apoo trilogy.
The youngest of seven children, Shankar was born into a Bengali family in Benares (now Varanasi), then the capital of the monarchy of the same name. His father, Shyam Shankar Chowdhury, was a lawyer and scholar at Middle-His Temple from East Bengal (now Bangladesh). A prominent statesman, lawyer and statesman, he served as his Dewan (Prime Minister) of Jalawar, Rajasthan for several years and used the Sanskrit spelling of his surname, dropping the last part. Shyam married Hemangini Devi, who came from a small village called Nasrapur in Mardabrok in the Gazipur district near Benares, and her father was a wealthy landowner. Shyam later worked as a lawyer in London, England and it was there that he married for the second time, while Devi raised Shankar in Benares and did not meet her son until he was eight years old.
Shankar’s parents died when he returned from a European tour, and political conflicts leading to World War II made traveling across the West difficult and went to Maihar to study Indian classical music as a Khan student and live with his family in the traditional Gurukul system. Khan was a strict teacher, Shankar was trained in sitar and surbahar, studied raga and dhrupad, damar and kyar musical styles, he learned the instrumental techniques of rudra, veena, rhubarb and surshingal.
Shankar completed his education in 1944. He moved to Mumbai and joined the Indian People’s Theater Society, in 1945 and he composed ballet music in 1946. Shankar composed the music for the popular song “Sare Jahan Se Achcha” when he was 25 years old. He began recording music for his HMV India and from February 1949 he was Music Director of All India Radio (AIR) in New Delhi until January 1956. In his compositions he combined western and classical Indian instruments.
