Ravi Shankar: Sitar Maestro to the World

As a child, Ravi Shankar toured Europe as a dancer, not a musician. At 18, he gave that career up entirely to spend years training under a strict classical guru. Decades later, a Beatle sought him out, and together they helped invent the modern benefit concert.

MCQ Questions

ARTNCULTURE0131

From a childhood dance troupe to the man who brought Indian classical music global attention.

1938

Gives up dance for the sitar

Shankar leaves his brother’s dance troupe to train under Ustad Allauddin Khan at Maihar for the next several years.

1949–1956

Leads music at All India Radio

Shankar serves as All India Radio’s music director in New Delhi, shaping national broadcast programming.

1971

Organises the Concert for Bangladesh

With George Harrison, Shankar stages one of the first major celebrity benefit concerts, in New York.

1999

Receives the Bharat Ratna

India awards Shankar its highest civilian honour, recognising a career that reshaped how the world heard Indian music.

The pattern: Shankar’s career kept widening in scope, from mastering one instrument under rigorous discipline, to shaping national radio, to changing how an entire global audience understood Indian classical music.

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📑 Contents

1Must Know
2Good to Know
3Test Yourself
4Great to Know

Must Know

Ravi Shankar (7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was India’s best-known sitar player. He was born Ravindra Shankar Chowdhury, in Benares (now Varanasi), and died at age 92, having performed until the end of his life.
At age 10, he joined his brother Uday Shankar’s dance troupe, touring Europe as a dancer, not yet as a musician.
In 1938, Shankar gave up dancing to train under Ustad Allauddin Khan at Maihar. He studied sitar and Hindustani classical music intensively there for several years.
He served as All India Radio’s music director in New Delhi, from February 1949 to January 1956.
His performances with violinist Yehudi Menuhin brought Indian classical music sustained international attention from the 1960s onward. So did his association with George Harrison of the Beatles.
Shankar received the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, in 1999. He had already received the Padma Bhushan in 1967 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1981.

Good to Know

In 1971, Shankar and George Harrison organised the Concert for Bangladesh in New York. Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Ringo Starr also performed, in one of the first major celebrity benefit concerts.
Shankar won five Grammy Awards over his career, including a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2012. The live album from the Concert for Bangladesh won Album of the Year at the 1973 Grammys.
His daughters, Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones, are half-sisters through him. Anoushka became an acclaimed sitar player in her own right, while Norah Jones became a Grammy-winning singer in an entirely different genre.
See ArtnCulture0100 — Sitar for the instrument Shankar spent his career championing worldwide.

Test Yourself

Great to Know

Shankar is often called the “godfather of world music.” His work changed how Western audiences engaged with non-Western classical traditions, not just how they perceived Indian music specifically.
The Concert for Bangladesh set a template that later benefit concerts, including Live Aid, would follow directly. A humanitarian crisis response became a reusable format for global pop culture.
Giving up an established dance career at 18, to start over as a classical music student under a demanding guru, was a genuine reinvention. It wasn’t a natural next step from what he’d already trained for.
His close ties to Yehudi Menuhin echo in a later generation of Indian-Western fusion musicians. See ArtnCulture0154 — L. Subramaniam, who also collaborated closely with Menuhin.

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