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the-south-asian.com May 2004 |
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May
2004 Music
Lehngas - a limited collection Books Between
Heaven and Hell
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" Music is merging. Soon there will be no boundaries and all world musicians will become a part of a single movement---to touch the heartstrings of the listeners." - L Shankar EAST MEETS WEST IN SHANKAR'S MUSIC by Rajdeep Datta
Grammy Award winner L. Shankar has been creating waves with his rare musical intensity. A virtuoso of fusion music, he has collaborated with artists like Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Frank Zappa, George Harrison, Sting, The Pretenders, and Van Morrison Indian music has been a source of inspiration for numerous musicians in the Western hemisphere. The Beatles experimented with ragas and sitar, the late George Harrison as a solo artist was a tanpura-sitar fanatic and the Rolling Stones have a special predilection for Indian percussion instruments especially the tabla. Peter Gabriel is an avid fan of Indian classical music and incorporates it in his compositions. But this is not a one-way street. Over the years India's musical virtuosos have been enthralling Western audiences - foremost among them is the diminutive Grammy award winning violinist, L. Shankar who has successfully captured the imagination of both the East and the West. Shankar stands tall in a crowd of luminaries that includes legends like Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins and Talking Heads. Apart from rubbing shoulders with Western music icons, he has also worked as a composer and performer with artistes like Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Frank Zappa, Sting, The Pretenders, Lou Reed, Van Morrison, Echo and Yoko Ono. That is a long list for someone who left his country with less than Rs. 300 in his pocket and a violin as his hand baggage. Shankar, who was recently in India along with his companion Gingger, regaled music aficionados with his soulful and surreal music. The double electric violin used by Shankar and Gingger is the first and the only piece of its kind. The musician conceptualised it 25 years ago and got it designed by Ken Parker--whose Parker guitars are an inseparable part of every world-class musician's instruments. Says Shankar, " I came up with the idea because I had to carry different instruments with different tunings – double bass, cello, violin, viola whenever I was touring--which is very often. It was a big problem. So I thought why not combine all of them into one? The result is this ten-string instrument." There has been no looking back since then. Shankar is now acclaimed the world over for his groundbreaking and highly influential east-meets-west collaborative efforts in the realm of world music. Apart from his musically creativity he is also known for his technical efficiency. Greener Pastures In the last three decades or so Shankar has sold over 10 million albums worldwide. - an achievement by any standards for a musician who left the country in 1969 looking for greener pastures. " Indian music is more revered abroad than in its own country,’ he laments, " but I look forward to the day when Indian musicians don’t have to go outside the country to achieve success," says the musical guru. From age two, L. Shankar started his musical journey as a disciple of his musician parents - V. Lakshminarayana and L. Seethalakshmi. By the time he was five he was well-versed in the art of playing the violin and by age seven he had mastered the drums. Later, as an internationally famed musician, the sixth child of a family of known musicians, along with L. Vaidyanathan and L. Subramaniam, Shankar made up the well-known violin trio. After winning a series of honours and awards, Shankar joined the London Trinity College and later went on to teach Indian music at Wesleyan University, USA, where he also received his doctorate in ethnomusicology [world music]. Here he met jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Garrison and the legendary John Mclaughlin while working as a teaching assistant and concertmaster of the university chamber orchestra. Shankar studied with McLaughlin in 1973 and two years later the two formed the World Music band Shakti which also had tabla maestro Zakir Hussain as its member. It is now disbanded because, as Shankar says, " Mclaughlin said we have achieved the purpose of the band and hence no longer necessary." After Shakti Shankar got involved with Frank Zappa's numerous musical experiments and this inspired the release of a solo album Touch Me There on Zappa Records. Then he released Who's To Know, the biggest selling South Indian classical album to date. His albums have featured an impressive line up of some of the biggest names in western music including Peter Gabriel, Phill Collins, Frank Zappa, Bono of U2, Sting and Bruce Springsteen. His other projects include the Sun City album (Artists Against Apartheid), the Princess Trust Rock Concerts featuring artists like Elton John, Eric Clapton and Bee Gees. The rock extravaganza Human Rights Now World Tour in 1998 featured his own group, which was joined in performance by Bruce Springsteen. The Grammy In 1993 he completed a long world tour with Peter Gabriel titled Secret World Tour that ended in the Woodstock Festival ’94. Shankar co-produced a one-hour BBC film and finally won the Grammy, music’s highest award, for The Last Temptation of Christ in which he co-wrote 13 of the tracks with Peter Gabriel. He refuses to tell his age, rather he believes in the eternity of the soul. "I believe inreincarnation," says this Chennai born Brahmin whose musical accompanist, 24-year-old Gingger, is a half Bengali, half South Indian and was born and bred in Los Angeles. Gingger went on to train in opera music, Indian violin, western classical music, piano pop and world music as also in Hindustani classical vocals. A PhD. student in world music at Calarts University in Los Angeles, she met Shankar at a concert in Spain some eight years ago and they have been performing together since. The duo’s album One In A Million is currently topping the charts in the US. "Because DVDs are not very popular in India we have converted this into CD format," says Gingger. Adds Shankar, " Music is merging. Soon there will be no boundaries and all world musicians will become a part of a single movement---to touch the heartstrings of the listeners." And surely people like L.Shankar and Gingger are at the forefront of this movement. ***** |
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