INDIAN SUN

A sprawling, ably written biography of Ravi Shankar (1920-2012), marking the centenary of his birth.

It may be jarring to those who remember the sight of Jimi Hendrix grooving to Shankar’s lightning-fast raga at Monterey Pop, but Indian classical music was once the jealously guarded domain of the upper class, “an elite art form that was struggling to survive on the waning patronage of maharajas and rich landowners.” That it spread to international audiences was largely due to Shankar, who toured constantly for decades. As British biographer Craske writes in this musicologically rich, sometimes technical narrative, Shankar started out as a dancer, touring Weimar Germany and performing at Carnegie Hall before taking “the path of most resistance” and entering into a rigorous musical education that lasted for years, practicing for as much as 14 hours per day. He arrived as a master just as two strains of Indian-influenced music were emerging in the West: a classical movement involving Philip Glass and Robert Reich and other composers and a jazz movement headed by John Coltrane. Shankar influenced both, especially Coltrane, and through him gained a following among rock musicians: Robby Krieger of the Doors, who listened to a raga every evening and applied it to songs such as “The End,” and Jimmy Page, for whom Shankar wrote out instructions on how to tune a sitar. No one would be more influenced than George Harrison, who approached Shankar carefully, even reverently. Beatles songs such as “Love You To” were the product, a song in which “the scale has flattened third and seventh notes and is thus in Dorian mode—or, as a north Indian classical musician would put it, Kafi thaat.” In this authoritative, slightly overlong portrait, Shankar emerges as an outwardly gentle perfectionist who was not without complications, especially his restless habit of moving from one romantic partner to another. Of course, fans and admirers won’t be bothered.

The definitive life of the sitar master.