Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar, (real name: Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury)  (7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012), often referred to by the title Pandit, was an Indian musician and composer of Bengali origin who played the sitar. He has been described as the best-known contemporary Indian musician. Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent his youth touring Europe and India with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. He gave up dancing in 1938 to study sitar playing under court musician Allauddin Khan. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956. In 1956, he began to tour Europe and the Americas playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and rock artist George Harrison of the Beatles. Shankar engaged Western music by writing concerti for sitar and orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992 he served as a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Parliament of India. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999, and received three Grammy Awards. He continued to perform in the 2000s, sometimes with his younger daughter, Anoushka. He was posthumously awarded two Grammy awards in 2013, one for lifetime achievement, another for The Living Room Sessions Part 1 in the world music category.==Links To Peel== In 1967 Indian classical music was fashionable due to George Harrison's use of the sitar on some Beatles tracks, so Peel responded by occasionally playing tracks by Ravi Shankar on his Perfumed Garden show on Radio London. When he was hosting Top Gear on BBC Radio 1 he featured sessions by Indian classical musicians Vilayat Khan and Imrat Khan, despite the fact that their music was radically different from anything else heard on the station. When punk arrived in the late 70's, world music was rarely played on Peel's show. It was only until the 80's, that Peel started to play world music, but mostly from Africa instead of Asia. In the late 80's, classical Indian music was virtually replaced on Peel's playlist by another Indian origin music called Bhangra, which Peel played quite regularly on his show until his death in 2004.

Other Shows Played
(The following list was compiled only from the database of this site and Lorcan's Tracklistings Archive and is certainly incomplete. Please add further details if known.)

1968 1993
 * 10 July 1968: Gat Kirwani (LP: Portrait Of Genius) Fontana TL 5285
 * 02 October 1968: ?
 * 19 November 1993: Solo De Tabla En Ektal (album Ravi Shankar - Ravi Shankar At The Monterey International Pop Festival) World Pacific (Tabla performed by Alla Rakha)