All Thinkers

Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar was an Indian musician. He played the sitar, a long-necked string instrument from northern India. He is the most famous Indian classical musician of the 20th century. He was born in 1920 in the city of Varanasi (also called Banaras), in northern India. He came from a Bengali Brahmin family. His father was a lawyer and scholar who left the family when Ravi was young. His older brother Uday Shankar was a famous dancer who toured the world with an Indian dance company. As a boy, Ravi joined his brother's troupe. He travelled across Europe and America as a young dancer and musician. He met many Western artists in this period. At 18, he made a serious decision. He left his brother's company and went to study music seriously with a great teacher named Allauddin Khan in central India. He spent seven years in Khan's home, training intensively in the strict Indian classical tradition. This kind of long apprenticeship was traditional. The teacher was almost a parent. Ravi later married Khan's daughter, Annapurna Devi, who was also a brilliant musician. From the 1950s onwards, his career grew rapidly. He performed across India, then in Europe and America. In the 1960s he became famous in the West, partly because of his friendship with George Harrison of the Beatles. He continued performing into his nineties. He had a complex personal life, with several partners and four children, including the musicians Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones. He died in San Diego in 2012, aged 92.

Origin
India (later based in California)
Lifespan
1920 - 2012
Era
Modern / 20th-Century India
Subjects
Indian Classical Music Sitar 20th Century World Music Indian Culture
Skills
Creative Expression Cultural Heritage And Identity Emotional Intelligence Research Skills Critical Thinking
Why They Matter

Ravi Shankar matters for three reasons. First, he was a master of one of the world's great classical music traditions. Indian classical music has roots going back over 2,000 years. It is built on complex melodic and rhythmic systems different from Western music. Shankar was a complete master of this system. His playing combined deep tradition with personal creativity. Within India, he was respected as one of the greatest sitar players ever.

Second, he opened Indian classical music to the world. Before him, most Western listeners knew almost nothing about it. Shankar gave concerts in concert halls across Europe and America. He explained the music to audiences who had never heard it. He recorded albums for Western labels. He worked with Western classical musicians like Yehudi Menuhin and with rock musicians like George Harrison. He helped create the international audience that Indian music now has.

Third, he shaped how the West thought about Indian culture in the second half of the 20th century. His friendship with George Harrison led many Western young people to take an interest in India. He performed at Woodstock in 1969 and the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. His role was complicated. He sometimes worried that Western audiences treated his music as a drug-related fad rather than as serious art. He insisted on its seriousness. He helped establish the global respect Indian classical music now has.

Key Ideas
1
What Is the Sitar?
2
What Is a Raga?
3
Friend of the Beatles
Key Quotations
"Our music is not entertainment. It is much more."
— From a 1971 interview with Ravi Shankar
Shankar said something like this in many interviews across his career. He insisted that Indian classical music was not just background entertainment. It came from a long spiritual and philosophical tradition. The ragas were thought to express deep emotional and spiritual truths. The slow patient build of a performance was meant to lead listeners into a kind of meditative state. Western audiences, especially in the 1960s, often did not understand this. They treated his concerts like rock shows. Shankar pushed back. The music deserved attention and respect, not just enjoyment. For students, the line is a useful prompt. What kind of attention does music deserve? Different traditions answer differently. Indian classical music asks for deep, focused listening. Pop music often does not. Both can be valuable, but they ask for different things from the listener.
"Music is meditation, and meditation is music."
— Reported in interviews and writings by Ravi Shankar
Shankar often connected his music to meditation. The slow exploration of a raga in the alap section is something like a meditative journey. The musician sits quietly and patiently, finding each note, listening to how it sounds in this moment. Audiences too were expected to enter a similar state. The music was not just heard. It was experienced as a focused attention. The traditional Indian view sees raga performance as having spiritual value. The musician is reaching towards something beyond ordinary life. Shankar took this seriously, even though he did not present himself as a religious teacher. For students, the line is a useful way to think about music as more than sound. Music can be a practice. The act of listening carefully, with full attention, has its own value. Many traditions across the world have made this connection between music and meditation.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Cultural Heritage and Identity When introducing students to Indian classical music
How to introduce
Play students a short opening passage from a Ravi Shankar recording, perhaps the alap section of a famous raga. The sitar makes an unusual sound to most Western ears. Tell students this is one of the world's great classical musical traditions, with roots going back over 2,000 years. India has its own equivalent of Bach and Beethoven, but the music sounds quite different and follows different rules. Introduce the basic idea of a raga: a kind of musical mood-pattern with strict rules. For students just meeting Indian music, this is a powerful starting point. The world has many serious classical music traditions, not just the European one.
Creative Expression When teaching students about improvisation
How to introduce
Tell students that an Indian classical musician does not perform a fixed composition. Within the strict rules of a raga, the musician improvises. Each performance is unique. Discuss with students what this means. The musician needs deep knowledge of the rules. They also need creativity within those rules. Both are required. Compare with jazz, where improvisation also happens within agreed structures. Western classical music, by contrast, mostly involves performing fixed compositions. None of these approaches is better than the others. They are different ways of being a serious musician. Shankar showed that improvisation within strict rules can produce music as deep as anything composed in advance.
Cultural Heritage and Identity When teaching students about cross-cultural exchange
How to introduce
Tell students about the meeting between Ravi Shankar and George Harrison of the Beatles. A young Western pop star wanted to learn the sitar. He met an older Indian master. The master agreed to teach him. They became close friends. Through this friendship, millions of young Westerners discovered Indian classical music. Discuss with students how meaningful exchange between cultures can happen. It often starts with curiosity, then patience, then real respect. Shankar did not water down his music for Harrison. Harrison did not try to take over the tradition. Both maintained their own ground while learning from each other. This is one good model for how cultures can meet.
Further Reading

For a first introduction, Ravi Shankar's autobiography My Music, My Life (1968, revised 2007) is the best starting point. The 1971 documentary Raga, directed by Howard Worth and produced with George Harrison, shows him performing and teaching. Many of his recordings are widely available. Good starting points include the album West Meets East with Yehudi Menuhin (1967) and Concert for Bangladesh (1971). The Concert for George tribute album (2002) includes powerful Indian music sections.

Key Ideas
1
The Long Apprenticeship
2
The Long Concert
3
Working with Yehudi Menuhin
Key Quotations
"I tried to put across the message that the music we play is over 2,000 years old, with deep traditions."
— Interview, 1989
This is from an interview in which Shankar reflected on his career as a cultural ambassador. He saw himself as carrying a 2,000-year-old tradition into Western concert halls. He wanted Western audiences to understand that Indian classical music had its own deep history, not just exotic colour. He explained ragas and rhythms before performances. He wrote books for Western readers. He recorded explanatory albums. The work of education was a major part of his career. He was not just a performer. He was a teacher, trying to help foreign audiences hear what they were hearing. For students, the line raises an interesting question. How does a serious tradition cross cultural lines? It often takes patient explanation. Shankar accepted this work as part of his job. Without it, his audiences would have heard the surface of the music and missed the depth.
"I love all music. But the music of my country, what we call our classical music, is something special. It is what I am."
— Paraphrased from various interviews
Shankar said similar things often. He was open to many kinds of music. He worked with Western classical musicians. He worked with rock musicians. He explored film soundtracks. But his deepest identity was as an Indian classical musician. The tradition was who he was. He had been trained for seven years in his teacher's home. He had spent his life inside the discipline. Other music was something he did. Indian classical music was what he was. For students, this is a useful example of cultural identity expressed through art. A musician can engage with many traditions while still belonging deeply to one. The other engagements enrich the home tradition rather than diluting it. Shankar's outside work made him a richer Indian classical musician, not a less Indian one.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Emotional Intelligence When teaching students about patience as a skill
How to introduce
Indian classical concerts can last hours. A single raga can take an hour or more. The music begins very slowly. There is no rush. Discuss with students what kind of patience this asks for, both from the musician and from the audience. Modern listeners are often used to short songs and fast rewards. Indian classical music asks for something different. It rewards deep attention over time. For students, this is a useful exercise in slowing down. Try listening to a 30-minute raga performance from start to finish. Many will find it hard at first. Many will also find that the experience grows as they go. Patience is a real skill that can be trained. Shankar's tradition is one place to train it.
Research Skills When teaching students about how traditions are passed down
How to introduce
Tell students about the guru-shishya tradition. A student lives in the teacher's home for years, sometimes a decade or more. They learn not just technique but a whole way of life. Compare with how music is usually taught in modern Western culture: weekly lessons, sometimes with several teachers, often combined with reading textbooks and watching online videos. Both methods produce skilled musicians, but they shape different kinds of musicians. Discuss with students which approach might suit different goals. The deep traditional approach goes deeper but is harder to access. The modern approach is more open but can stay shallower. Both serve valuable purposes.
Further Reading

For deeper reading, Oliver Craske's Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar (2020) is the standard scholarly biography. Peter Lavezzoli's The Dawn of Indian Music in the West (2006) covers the wider context of how Indian music reached Western audiences. For Indian classical music more broadly, Bonnie Wade's Music in India (1979, revised 2004) is a clear textbook. Sandeep Bagchee's Nad: Understanding Raga Music (1998) is excellent on the music theory.

Key Ideas
1
The Hippie Problem
2
His Complicated Personal Life
3
Indian Classical Music as Living Tradition
Key Quotations
"I felt very sad and unhappy when our music was associated with sex, drugs, and the so-called freak movement."
— Ravi Shankar, My Music, My Life (1968)
Shankar wrote this in his 1968 autobiography. He had become famous in the West partly through young hippie audiences in the late 1960s. Many of them associated his music with the drug-taking, sexually liberal counterculture of the time. Shankar hated this. He wrote and spoke many times about how his music was a serious classical tradition, not a drug accessory. He scolded audiences who came to his concerts high. He distanced himself from the surface 'Eastern' fashion of the period. The line above shows his real feelings. For advanced students, this is a useful case in cultural exchange. Western enthusiasm for foreign cultures can be sincere and respectful, or it can be superficial and patronising. Shankar's experience showed both kinds. He worked hard to push his audience towards the deeper understanding. He did not always succeed.
"We have a saying that to play music well, you must first be a good human being."
— Reported in interviews and Indian classical teaching
This kind of statement comes up often in Indian classical music. The tradition holds that musical mastery and personal character are connected. To play deeply requires depth of character. Egotism, anger, and impatience get in the way. Generations of teachers have stressed the inner work alongside the technical work. Shankar was inside this tradition. He often spoke of the spiritual dimension of his playing. At the same time, his own personal life was complicated, including relationships and abandonments that some have seen as failing the tradition's own standard. The line is therefore both a genuine teaching from his tradition and a useful prompt for honest reflection. For advanced students, the question is interesting. Can a flawed person produce great spiritual music? The answer in many traditions has been yes. The art does not require the artist to be a saint. But the tension between the ideal and the reality is part of what serious art demands of us to think about.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Critical Thinking When teaching students about cultural appropriation and respect
How to introduce
Discuss the complicated cultural exchange of the 1960s. Many young Westerners became interested in Indian music, religion, and clothing. Some of this interest was deep and respectful. Some was shallow and used Indian things as fashion accessories. Ravi Shankar was sometimes uncomfortable with the way Western audiences treated his music. Discuss with advanced students what makes cultural exchange respectful versus superficial. The line is not always clear. Curiosity can be either. The difference often lies in patience, in real learning, in respecting what the source culture says about its own traditions. Shankar's career is a useful case study because he saw both sides.
Critical Thinking When teaching students about admired figures and their flaws
How to introduce
Walk students through Ravi Shankar's complicated personal life. He was a great musician. He was also a man whose treatment of women and children was sometimes troubling. Norah Jones, his daughter, has spoken about his absence from her childhood. Discuss with advanced students how to think about admired figures with serious flaws. We do not need to pick between worship and dismissal. We can hold both the achievement and the failure together. The music is what it is. The personal life is what it was. Honest engagement looks at both. This is true for many great artists. Avoiding the question does not respect them more. Looking at the whole picture does.
Common Misconceptions
Common misconception

Ravi Shankar invented Indian classical music.

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What to teach instead

He did not. Indian classical music has roots going back over 2,000 years, with foundational ideas developed in ancient Sanskrit treatises. Shankar was a great inheritor of an existing deep tradition, not its inventor. His own teacher, Ustad Allauddin Khan, was a master of the tradition. So were many others before and during Shankar's career. What Shankar did was bring the tradition to a global audience and add his own creative voice within it. He was a brilliant practitioner of a tradition that was already old when he was born and that continues now after his death.

Common misconception

All Indian classical music is the same.

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What to teach instead

It is not. There are two main classical traditions in India. Hindustani music is the northern tradition. It is what Shankar played. Carnatic music is the southern tradition, mainly in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh. The two traditions share basic concepts of raga and rhythm but differ in style, language of vocal music, instruments, and performance practice. Within Hindustani music there are also several different gharanas (school lineages), each with their own approach. Shankar belonged to one of these. Treating Indian classical music as a single uniform tradition misses much of its richness.

Common misconception

Indian classical music has no rules and is just improvisation.

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What to teach instead

It is highly structured. Each raga has strict rules about which notes are used, in which order, with which emphasis. The rhythmic system, called tala, also has strict patterns. Within these rules, the musician improvises. The freedom lies inside the structure. Calling Indian classical music 'just improvisation' misses how disciplined it is. A skilled musician knows the rules of dozens of ragas in deep detail. Most listeners cannot hear all the rules being followed, but the rules are there. The music is rigorous in its own way, just as Western classical music is rigorous in its own way.

Common misconception

Shankar made his music more 'Western' to please international audiences.

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What to teach instead

He did not, mostly. He shortened performances for Western concerts because Western audiences were not used to four-hour concerts. He explained ragas in advance because his audiences did not know the tradition. He worked with Western musicians on cross-cultural projects. But in his core performances, he played serious traditional Hindustani classical music with full integrity. He was very protective of the tradition. He criticised superficial 'fusion' work. He insisted his music be heard as serious classical music, not as exotic background. The accusation that he sold out is not supported by careful listening to what he actually played.

Intellectual Connections
Complements
Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven and Shankar belong to two of the world's great classical music traditions. Reading them together helps students see that classical music is not only Western. The two traditions developed independently, each with deep philosophical and emotional ambitions. Both stand at the centre of how their cultures understand serious music. Shankar himself respected Western classical music and worked with Western classical musicians. The comparison is useful for decentring the assumption that 'classical music' refers only to Bach and Beethoven. India and the West each produced rich classical traditions of similar depth.
Complements
Umm Kulthum
Umm Kulthum and Shankar were near contemporaries who became national symbols of their cultures through music. Both worked in their own classical traditions, Arab and Indian. Both reached huge international audiences without abandoning their roots. Both had complicated personal lives alongside their public work. Reading them together gives students a sense of how 20th-century musical greatness came from many cultures, not only the West. Both showed that traditional non-Western classical traditions could be alive, modern, and globally important.
Develops
Rabindranath Tagore
Tagore, the great Bengali poet and Nobel laureate, came from the same Bengali cultural world Shankar came from. Tagore wrote songs known as Rabindra Sangeet, which combined classical Indian music with new poetic and emotional content. He was a major influence on Bengali culture in the early 20th century. Shankar grew up in this cultural atmosphere. Reading them together gives students a sense of how Bengali culture in the 20th century produced a distinct intellectual and artistic tradition that shaped India and the world. Tagore set the cultural ambition. Shankar inherited it and carried Indian music to the world.
In Dialogue With
Edward Said
Said, the great Palestinian-American intellectual, wrote about how the West has often misunderstood Eastern cultures, sometimes treating them as exotic, romantic, or fashionable rather than as serious traditions on their own terms. Shankar lived this distinction. Western audiences in the 1960s sometimes treated his music as fashionable Eastern colour. Shankar pushed back, insisting on serious recognition. Reading them together gives students useful tools for thinking about cultural exchange. Said's analysis explains some of what Shankar struggled against. Shankar's example shows what serious traditions ask for in return for their gifts.
Complements
Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa, the great Japanese filmmaker, and Shankar shared a similar position in 20th-century cultural history. Both were Asian masters working deeply in their own classical traditions while also engaging with Western audiences. Both used their international fame to bring serious recognition to Asian art forms. Both insisted on being seen as serious artists rather than as exotic representatives of their cultures. Reading them together gives students a sense of how 20th-century Asian artists worked across cultural lines without surrendering their own identities.
Anticipates
Vandana Shiva
Shiva, the contemporary Indian environmental thinker and activist, has worked to defend traditional Indian knowledge systems against being absorbed or dismissed by global Western frameworks. Shankar did similar work in music, though he would not have used the same political language. Both insisted that Indian traditions had their own integrity and depth, and that they should be respected on their own terms rather than made to fit Western categories. Reading them together gives students a sense of how the project of cultural self-respect runs through many parts of modern Indian life, from agriculture and ecology to music and arts.
Further Reading

For research-level engagement, Daniel Neuman's The Life of Music in North India (1990) is a major ethnographic study of the world Shankar worked in. Bonnie Wade's Khyal: Creativity Within North India's Classical Music Tradition (1984) is a detailed study of a related vocal tradition. The journal Asian Music regularly publishes scholarship on the field. The Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata holds extensive archival material. Anoushka Shankar's recent autobiography and Norah Jones's interviews offer additional family perspectives on Shankar's life.