Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar - Hardcover

Craske, Oliver

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571350852 ISBN 13: 9780571350858

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2020

Synopsis

A Times, Spectator, TLS and BBC Music Magazine Book of the Year

A major biography of Ravi Shankar published on the centenary of his birth: the first full portrait of the man and the artist across his extraordinary ninety-two years.

As an icon of India, Ravi Shankar ranks not far below Gandhi or the Taj Mahal. He was one of the twentieth century's most important musicians, and India's greatest cultural ambassador. The maestro of the sitar filled the world's leading concert halls, festival stages and airwaves with Indian classical music at a time when it was little known outside its homeland.

A sensation at Monterey Pop, the Woodstock Festival and the Concert for Bangladesh, he also helped reshape jazz, minimalism and electronic music, pioneered the sitar concerto, and wrote many film scores, including Pather Panchali and Gandhi. He charted the map for countless global musicians who followed in his wake. The unparalleled breadth of his impact is reflected in his disciples, who included George Harrison, John Coltrane, Philip Glass and Yehudi Menuhin.

For this first biography of Ravi Shankar, Oliver Craske has carried out more than 130 new interviews and enjoyed unprecedented access to the Shankar family archives. He presents the first full portrait of the man and the artist, painting a vivid picture of the public and private faces of a captivating, restless workaholic who lived an intense and extraordinary life across ninety-two years. He investigates Shankar's childhood traumas and youthful stardom as a dancer, his intensive study of the sitar and his leading role in the revival of Indian classical music in his homeland, and his subsequent international career that ultimately made his name synonymous with India. Throughout, this biography seeks to answer the question of what impelled Ravi Shankar on an unending creative and emotional quest.

About this title

About the Author

Oliver Craske is a writer and editor from London. Alongside a career as a book publisher, he has had a longstanding interest in Indian music. He first met Shankar in 1994, worked with him on his autobiography (Raga Mala, 1997) and was encouraged by him to write his full story after his death.

From the Back Cover

Over eight decades, Ravi Shankar was India's greatest cultural ambassador who took Indian classical music to the world's leading concert halls and festivals, charting the map for those who followed. Renowned for his association with The Beatles - teaching George Harrison sitar - Shankar turning the Sixties generation on to Indian music, astonishing the crowds at Woodstock, Monterey Pop and the Concert for Bangladesh with his virtuosity. He radically reshaped jazz and Western classical music as well as writing film scores, including Pather Panchali and Gandhi, and transformed awareness of Indian culture in the process.

Indian Sun is the first biography of Ravi Shankar. Benefitting from unprecedented access to family archives, Oliver Craske paints a vivid picture of a captivating, restless workaholic, who lived a passionate and extraordinary life - from his childhood in his brother's dance troupe, through intensive study of the sitar, to his revival of the national music scene; and from the 1950s, a pioneering international career that ultimately made his name synonymous with India.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571350852
• ISBN 13: 9780571350858
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 672