The birth a century ago this week of Indian musician Ravi Shankar, best known in the West for having taught Beatle George Harrison to play the sitar, has been marked by the release of rare material from his family’s private archive.
The footage has posted by the BBC.
It said in a report that planned celebrations, including concerts at the London South Bank Centre and Carnegie Hall in New York, were postponed because of the coronavirus outbreak.
The acclaimed Bengali musician, who composed Hindustani classical music, helped popularize Indian musical forms in Europe and the Americas from the late 1950s. He had a close association with violinist Yedudi Menuhin.
Shankar’s influence on George Harrison led to increased use of Indian instruments in pop music from the late 1960s.
Harrison used the sitar in the song Norwegian Wood. In 1968, he went to India to take lessons from Shankar.
[Picture: Markgoff2972, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34968765]