
Ravi Shankar & George Harrison
The general take: If this ain't Rock-n-Roll I don't know what is?
Relax. Sit in a full lotus position...or not. Get comfortable.
(If you want some wine then by all means, bottoms up.)
Close your eyes three-quarters of the way so you're not completely blind--clear your mind of all but the music (the mind is a drunken monkey anyway...)-- & be thoroughly transported.
"The world has kissed my soul with its pain, asking for its return in songs."
-- Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, verse 167
To Ravi: I hear the "god" within you.
Thanks for having been, for uniting music East & West & of course for making Norah Jones.
Good journey.
"Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love." -- Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, verse 280
Ravi Shankar (Bengali: রবি শংকর; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012[2]), often referred to by the title Pandit, was an Indian musician and composer who played the plucked-string instrument sitar. He was described as the best-known contemporary Indian musician.[3]
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 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, often with his daughter, Anoushka.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravi_Shankar
A veritable gem..with virtuoso tabla of Chatur Lal recorded in 1963 when Shankar had fire in his belly ..was in his early prime....the majestic start ...the meandering melody thus reconditions the soul inculcating in it a certain sense of levitation.. imbued with divinity..a kind of mantra..a dialogue with God...elevates you to Nirvana ..leads you to Valhalla and firmly deposits you there ... sempiternally...tabla solo in the middle ( 5:51 to 8:44) by Chatur Lal is simply mesmerizing! And 8:44 to 10-45 is probably one of the best and perfect sitar/tabla rapport ( jugalbandi) of all time! Don't miss 5:22 to 6:35 sitar engages in a dialogue with tabla then fades gracefully to make way for tabla solo....if ever there was a magical music tour this is it...this is it...and this is it...Ravi Shankar and Chatur Lal here transport you to a world where music is redefined...and reinvented...... coruscating with a thousand nuances of vibrating colour...transforming the banal into a source of wonder.... and wonderment...
--BoratBrother