This review was originally published at Green Man Review.
Ravi Shankar was, for a couple of generations of music listeners — mine and my parents’, more or less — the first major figure of international music. World music, as it’s called now. He began recording in India in the 1940s, and some of his recordings were released in the West in the 1950s. And he became the first major Indian musician to actively reach out to Western audiences and work with major Western artists, of both the pop and classical worlds. For many, he was, and remains, the chief musical ambassador from the East to the West.
Shankar has a discography that probably exceeds a hundred releases, if you were to track down all the various discs put out in Asia, Europe and America. Compiling an “essential” set would seem to be a folly, but in this two-disc set producers have done what seems an admirable job of sampling many of the high points. The compilers seem not to have limited themselves to merely works originally released by members of the Columbia family of labels, although there has been so much consolidation over the past two decades, it’s impossible to say for certain. Not being a collector or even aficionado myself (merely an appreciator of the music and the musician), I can’t pass judgment on whether the selections comprise a true “essential” look at Shankar’s music, or whether this collection is “essential” for the collector. All I can say is, I like it. A lot.
The first disc, Out of the East, looks at Shankar’s earlier recordings available in the West, and traces his nascent career before Western audiences. It comprises six longish instrumental tracks (five traditional, one Shankar composition), which follow a five-minute spoken introduction to Indian classical music narrated by Shankar. The six instrumental tracks start with a recording from a 1957 album, The Sounds of India; proceeds to India’s Master Musician from 1963; has two from the 1967 Columbia release The Genius of Ravi Shankar, which was originally recorded 10 years earlier; and one from a 1964 recording The Master Musician of India. This latter track, a 14-minute excerpt from the “Raga Palas Kafi,” is quite interesting. It’s a duet of sorts with Shankar on sitar and Ali Akbar Khan on the deeper, warmer sarod, and it builds very very slowly to a very exciting pace, a work of virtuosic restraint. The disc ends with another excerpt, just the final, fast rhythmic section of the raga “Dhun,” recorded at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, which was the first mass exposure of Americans to Shankar in concert. It’s an impressive display of musicianship, and one can only imagine its effect on its audience in that long-ago Summer of Love. Heady stuff!
The second disc, Into the West, chronicles Shankar’s excursions into a synthesis of Indian and Western classical music traditions. It gets off to a rousing start with “Swara-Kakali” from the album West Meets East that he recorded in 1967 with Israeli violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The excitement of the two masters is palpable, and the tabla player Alla Rakha in particular rises to the occasion with flurries of notes that seem to goad the two players on.
Next is “Discovery of India,” a track from the 1981 Oscar-nominated soundtrack to the film Gandhi. The presence of the Indian violin called a sarangi adds to the accessibility of this somewhat Western-sounding piece. “Raga Miniature” and “Chappaqua” are taken from the soundtrack to the independent 1967 film Chappaqua. Both are Shankar compositions (as are all but three tracks on this disc), the first using traditional instruments, the second employing several Western instruments, including oboe, flute and harp, and a real East-West fusion sound.
This disc is rife with the fingerprints of Beatle George Harrison, one of Shankar’s protégés and later a friend. Harrison produced some of Shankar’s fusion albums, including 1987′s Tana Mana represented here by “Friar Park” on which George also plays autoharp, and Chants, recorded in the ’80s but not released until 1995. The track here, “Vandanaa Trayee,” is lovely and meditative, with a combination of Indian and Western instruments (violin, cello, flute) and chanting singers. “Friar Park” is similarly entrancing, with sarod and sitar juxtaposed with marimba and autoharp, the marimba emphasizing the Western notion of the passing of time, the sarod and sitar floating serenely atop the rhythm, until the tabla kicks in and changes the nature of the dance to one altogether more exotic. Harrison also plays (autoharp and synth) on “Memory of Uday,” which features a very large ensemble of otherwise traditional players.
There are a couple of tracks from the live album Inside the Kremlin recorded on Shankar’s 1987 sojourn in the Soviet Union. “Sandhya Raga” is fairly traditional, and is notable for the interplay between Shankar on sitar and V.M. Bhatt on guitar. The elegiac “Shanti Mantra” includes vocals by a Soviet choir and a large Indian ensemble. The only piece in the whole collection not traditional or Shankar’s is “Ragas in Minor Scale” by Philip Glass, which marries counterpoint with modernist music and Indian scales.
Several tracks include vocals. One particularly lovely example is a traditional suite with Lakshmi Shankar and Ashit Desai singing and members of the Wren Orchestra playing; this one’s also from the Gandhi soundtrack. The disc ends with an orchestral piece, “Offering,” from 1990′s Passages album. A large string section is joined by several saxophones and horns, and no sitar at all.
I like the second disc better than I expected to. These fusion experiments mostly avoid the tendency such recordings have to sound like misbegotten mash-ups. I still prefer my Indian music straight-up, but the colors and textures of Indian music can sometimes be a great addition to pieces in the Western classical tradition.
Overall, I like what the compilers have brought together for this collection.
Gary Whitehouse
(Columbia/Private Music/Legacy, 2005)
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