Music can be a way to peace
India’s greatest cultural ambassador sitarist Ravi Shankar, ten years after his death which fell in 2020 is being marked by the pandemic-delayed Shankar 100, two months events began in February in London’s South Bank Centre, in which his daughter, sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar, was among the family and students paying tribute.
Anoushka was the heart of the memorial concert at the Royal Festival Hall that included her father’s former students, fans from across India and around the world, such as compose Nitin Sawhney, Dhani Harrison son of George Harrison, the Beatle Ravi Shankar tutored and befriended.
The concert began with invocations to Ganesha and Saraswati -deities associated with beauty, knowledge, and the arts.
The use of instruments from across India and its folk cultures, including clay-pot ghatam and morsing ( an Indian Jew’s harp) paid homage to her father’s role as a champion of all Indian traditions.
Anoushka said ” He drew so much from all the various folk traditions and elevated them to being with these classical contexts. He showcased Carnatic South Indian music to the North and vice versa and really changed the representation of music within India.”
Anoushka played metronome on her sitar amid 20 explosive performers as when executing her own bravura solo pieces and duets.
There was also a closing performance by 100 dancers from London’s Sujata Banerjee Dance Company to ” Shanti Mantra” (Peace Mantra) composed by her father for a concert he gave in the Kremlin in the 1980s, fusing the cultures of both countries.
“It’s a prayer for peace as my father wanted to go there and perform with a 100-member Russian Choir and 100 Indian musicians. I think again and again of what my father did. He would always come back to this idea that it’s about peace. That music can be a way to come to peace” Anoushka said.
Anoushka Shankar born 9th June 1981, is a British-Indian American sitar player, the first woman to receive a British House of Commons Shield, and has 7 Grammy awards nominations.