Indian Sun

The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar

Oliver Craske

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571350872
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

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

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Map of the Indian Subcontinent, 2020
• The Sitar (Ravi Shankar Model)
• The Octave in Indian Classical Music
• Ragas Created by Ravi Shankar
• Talas Commonly Used by Ravi Shankar
• Shankar Family Tree
• Introduction: An Unending Quest
• I: STAR FORMATION, 1920–1944
• II: THE SUN RISING, 1944–1956
• III: WANDERING STAR, 1956–1965
• IV: SUPERSTAR, 1965–1970
• V: PERPETUAL ORBIT, 1970–1987
• VI: EVENING SUN, 1987–2012
• Epilogue: The Sun Won’t Set
• References
• Bibliography
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Photographs
• About the Author
• Copyright