Anoushka Shankar has rounded third and is eyeing home. Credited with introducing Indian classical music to the West, Ravi gave sitar lessons to George Harrison in the mids, an association which led to the production of the influential film Raga and one of the first major benefit events in rock, the Concert for Bangladesh.
In , he released West Meets East with violinist Yehudi Menuhin, a landmark in cross-cultural exchange. Read on for more details on that. Anoushka Shankar: There are fancy answers and the practical truth. Coming out of lockdown I got stuck in my head. I felt I should have something really big to say, the best, deepest work I'd ever made. As a result, I wrote nothing, waiting for the post-pandemic opus.
Then I was in a cafe in Goa, on a week's holiday with my kids and I had the idea to release three mini stories that connect, telling a story over a couple of years, touring in between each chapter. The idea of three is that I have these three roots, and each dips into one a bit more deeply. I also like telling a story with time. Riz is a good friend, and I was playing at a surprise pub night here in London. I was out of my norm, this was in a pub, a very grimy kind of 10 minute thing, but it felt really good.
This has legs. You are up for two Grammys, your 10th and 11th nominations. The one that cut the most was [in ] when my dad, who had passed just two months earlier, was nominated against me, and I went up to receive his award when I lost. That had all kinds of feelings I didn't know how to process. It was nice it stayed in the family, but it was weird. Kate Bush never won one. I actually had some say in that. Means absolutely nothing. But my music has existed over so many genres, you could subjectively say it's jazz or alternative or pop, but by virtue of where I'm from and the color of my skin, I seem to really only belong in two categories, so I just thought for a change, let's try the other one.
I named it a month after October 7. So that pointed more to the new age category, which is traditionally about some kind of healing or upliftment. That category used to be a little bit more narrow, likeβ¦you knowβ¦white people making Indian music, really. But it has broadened, with neoclassical piano music, meditation music, chant, and it felt right. This has come up before. I am aware of this. Even in my classical shows, I have fun and I feel really happy.
