Music Directors

 Having discussed about the lyricists in the previous chapter I will now dedicate the present chapter for Music Directors or Composers who have given life to the poems/songs/ lyrics by composing ever memorable tunes which they had adopted from various Ragas.These music Directors are not Copy Cats but had gone into the depth of the Raga, the situation of the film, the actor(s), the lyric before they compoised the music for the song. That is why many of the songs are ever green types and will remain ever green for ever.

A song comprises of the following principles.

a.      The lyric written by the lyricist according to the situation of the fim. This forms the skeleton to give the shape.

b.     The music composed by the Music Director gives life to the skeleton.

c.     The singer(s) are the heart, the beats of the same is controlled by the Music Composer.

d.     The instrumentlists and percussion artists give form the sensors.

e.      Public/Audience form the cells of the system whose opinion/wants are more important for the composers to compose the music for the song.

Thus the song(s) remain in the minds of people like ever green trees based upon the above mentioned principles. If the public sing a song when they walk or when they relax or want the song to be sung in a family gathering or social get together that is the indication that the song had captured them effectively.

With this prelude I wish to continue this chapter by giving a brief account of the directors individually including the respective personal life and attributes to the person’s contribution in his career as music director.

First, I intend to take Pandit Ravi Shankar, a great and popular figure in our country. His devotion and dedication to Indian classical music was recognized not only in India but in the world. Any one going through this paper will understand as to why I chose him first. 

Pandit Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar KBE (Bengali pronunciation: [ˈrobi ˈʃɔŋkor]; Bengali: রবি শঙ্কর; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian Sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known export of North Indian classical music in the second half of the 20th century and influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999.

Shankar was born to a Bengali Brahmin family in India and spent his youth as a dancer touring India and Europe 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, Shankar began to tour Europe and the Americas playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance. His association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison is noteworthy. His influence on Harrison helped popularize the use of Indian instruments in Western pop music in the latter half of the 1960s. Shankar engaged Western music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra, and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992, he served as a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Parliament of India. He continued to perform until the end of his life.

Shankar was born on 7 April 1920 in Benares (now Varanasi), then the capital of the eponymous princely state, in a Bengali family, as the youngest of seven brothers. His father, Shyam Shankar Chowdhury, was a Middle Temple barrister and scholar from East Bengal (now Bangladesh). A respected statesman, lawyer and politician, he served for several years as dewan (Prime minister) of Jhalawar, Rajasthan, and used the Sanskrit spelling of the family name and removed its last part. Shyam was married to Hemangini Devi who hailed from a small village named Nasrathpur in Mardah block of Ghazipur district, near Benares and her father was a prosperous landlord. Shyam later worked as a lawyer in London, England. There he married second time while Devi raised Shankar in Benares. He did not meet his son until he was eight years old.

At the age of 10, after spending his first decade in Benares, Shankar went to Paris with the dance group of his brother, choreographer Uday Shankar.  By the age of 13 he had become a member of the group, accompanied its members on tour and learned to dance and play various Indian instruments. Uday's dance group travelled Europe and the United States in the early to mid-1930s and Shankar learned French, discovered Western classical music, jazz, cinema and became acquainted with Western customs. Shankar heard Allauddin Khan – the lead musician at the court of the princely state of Maihar – play at a music conference in December 1934 in Calcutta, and Uday persuaded the Maharaja of Maihar H.H Maharaja Brijnath singh Judev in 1935 to allow Khan to become his group's soloist for a tour of Europe. Shankar was sporadically trained by Khan on tour, and Khan offered Shankar training to become a serious musician under the condition that he abandon touring and come to Maihar.

 Shankar gave up his dancing career in 1938 to go to Maihar and study Indian classical music as Khan's pupil, living with his family in the traditional Gurukul system. Khan was a rigorous teacher and Shankar had training on sitar and surbahar. He learned ragas and the musical styles dhrupad, dhamal and Khyal.  He was taught the techniques of the instruments rudra veena, ruba, and sursingar. He often studied with Khan's children Ali Akbar Khan and Annapurna Devi. Shankar began to perform publicly on sitar in December 1939 and his debut performance was a jugalbandi (duet) with Ali Akbar Khan, who played the string instrument Sarod.

Shankar completed his training in 1944. He moved to Mumbai and joined the Indian People's Theatre Association, for whom he composed music for ballets in 1945 and 1946. Shankar recomposed the music for the popular song "Sare Jahan Se Achcha" at the age of 25. He began to record music for HMV India and worked as a music director for All India Radio (AIR), New Delhi, from February 1949 until January 1956.^[8] Shankar founded the Indian National Orchestra at AIR and composed for it; in his compositions he combined Western and classical Indian instrumentation. Beginning in the mid-1950s he composed the music for the Apu Triology by Satyajit Ray, which became internationally acclaimed. He was music director for several Hindi movies including Godaan and Anuradha.

Shankar (right) at a meeting with Satyajit Ray for the sound production of Pather Panchali (1955)

1956–1969: International performances

V K Narayana Menon, director of AIR Delhi, introduced the Western violinist Yehudi Menuhin to Shankar during Menuhin's first visit to India in 1952. Shankar had performed as part of a cultural delegation in the Soviet Union in 1954 and Menuhin invited Shankar in 1955 to perform in New York City for a demonstration of Indian classical music, sponsored by the Ford Foundation.

Shankar heard about the positive response Khan received and resigned from AIR in 1956 to tour the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. He played for smaller audiences and educated them about Indian music, incorporating ragas from the South Indian Carnatic music in his performances, and recorded his first LP album Three Raagas in London, released in 1956. In 1958, Shankar participated in the celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the United Nations and UNESCO music festival in Paris. From 1961, he toured Europe, the United States, and Australia, and became the first Indian to compose music for non-Indian films. Shankar founded the Kinnara School of Music in Mumbai in 1962.

Shankar befriended Richard Bock, founder of World Pacific Records, on his first American tour and recorded most of his albums in the 1950s and 1960s for Bock's label. The Byrds recorded at the same studio and heard Shankar's music, which led them to incorporate some of its elements in theirs, introducing the genre to their friend George Harrison of the Beatles. In 1967, Shankar performed a well-received set at the Monterey Pop Festival. While complimentary of the talents of several of the rock artists at the festival, he said he was "horrified" to see Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar on stage. "That was too much for me. In our culture, we have such respect for musical instruments, they are like part of God. Shankar's live album from Monterey peaked at number 43 on Billboard's pop LPs chart in the US, which remains the highest placing he achieved on that chart.^[37]

Shankar won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for West meets East, a collaboration with Yehudi Menuhin. He opened a Western branch of the Kinnara School of Music in Los Angeles, in May 1967, and published an autobiography, My Music My Life in 1968. In 1968, he composed the score for the film Charly.

He performed at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969, and found he disliked the venue. In the late 1960s, Shankar distanced himself from the hippie movement and drug culture. He explained during an interview:

It makes me feel rather hurt when I see the association of drugs with our music. The music to us is religion. The quickest way to reach godliness is through music. I don't like the association of one bad thing with the music.

1970–2012

In October 1970, Shankar became chair of the Department of Indian Music of the California Institute of the Arts after previously teaching at the City College of New York, the University of California and Los Angeles. He was a guest lecturer at other colleges and universities including the Ali Akbar College of Music. In late 1970 the London Symphony Orchestra invited Shankar to compose a concerto with Sitar. Concerto for Sitar & Orchestra was performed with André Previn as conductor and Shankar playing the sitar.

 Shankar performed at the Concert for the  Bangladesh in August 1971, held at Madison Square Garden in New York. After the musicians had tuned up on stage for over a minute, the crowd of rock-music fans broke into applause, to which the amused Shankar responded, "If you like our tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing more. This confused the audience. ^[Although interest in Indian music had decreased in the early 1970s, the live album from the concert became one of the best-selling recordings to feature the genre and won Shankar a second Grammy Award.

In November and December 1974, Shankar co-headlined a North American tour with George Harrison. The demanding schedule weakened his health and he suffered a heart attack in Chicago causing him to miss a portion of the tour. Harrison, Shankar and members of the touring band visited the White House on invitation of John Gardner Ford son of US president Gerald Ford. Shankar toured and taught for the remainder of the 1970s and the 1980s and released his second concerto RAGA MALA, conducted by Zubin Mehta, in 1981. Shankar was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Music Score for his work on the 1982 movie Gandhi. 

He performed in Moscow in 1988 with 140 musicians, including the Russian Folk Ensemble and members of the Moscow Philharmonic, along with his own group of Indian musicians.

He served as a member of the Rajya Sabha from 12 May 1986 to 11 May 1992, after being nominated by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Shankar composed the dance drama Ghanashyam in 1989. His liberal views on musical co-operation led him to contemporary composer Philip Glass, with whom he released an album, Passages, in 1990 in a project initiated by Peter Baumann of the band Tangerine Dream.

Shankar performing with Anoushka Shankar in 2007

Because of the positive response to Shankar's 1996 career compilation, In Celebration, Shankar wrote a second autobiography,RAGA MALA. He performed between 25 and 40 concerts every year during the late 1990s. Shankar taught his daughter Anoushka Shankar to play sitar and in 1997 became a Regents' Professor at University of California, San Diego.

He performed with Anoushka for the BBC in 1997 at the Symphony Hall in Birmingham, England. In 2000s, he won a GRAMMY AWARD for Best World Music Album. His daughter Anoushka Shankar released a book about her father, Bapi: Love of my Life in 2002. After George Harrison's death in 2001, Shankar performed at the Concert for George, a celebration of Harrison's music staged at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2002.

Collaboration with George Harrison

George Harrison, US President Gerald Ford and Ravi Shankar in the Oval Office in December 1974

Beatles guitarist George Harrison, who was first introduced to Shankar's music by American singers Roger McGuinn and David Crosby. They were big fans of Shankar and became influenced by Shankar's music. Harrison went on to help popularize Shankar and the use of Indian instruments in pop music throughout the 1960s.

George Harrison met Shankar in 1966 and he visited India later that year to study sitar under Ravi in Srinagar.  During the visit, a documentary film about Shankar named RAGA was shot by Howard Worth and released in 1971. Shankar's association with Harrison greatly increased Shankar's popularity. Decades later Ken Hunt of AllMusic wrote that Shankar had become "the most famous Indian musician on the planet" by 1966.

Harrison became interested in Indian classical music, bought a sitar and used it to record the song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". In 1968, he went to India to take lessons from Shankar, some of which were captured on film. This led to Indian music being used by other musicians and popularised the raga rock trend. As the sitar and Indian music grew in popularity groups such as The Rolling Stones, The Animals and The Byrds began using it in some of their songs. 

Awards and Honours

Indian Government honours

·         Bharat Ratna (1999)

·         Padma Vibhushan (1981)

·         Padma Bhushan (1967)

·         Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1962)

·         Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship (1975)

·         Kalidas Samman from the Government of Madhya Pradesh for 1987–88

Other governmental and academic honours

·         Ramon Magsaysay Award (1992)

·         Commander of the Legion of Honour of France (2000)

·         Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) for "services to music" (2001)

·         Honorary degrees from universities in India and the United States.

·         Honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

·         Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne, Australia (2010)

Arts awards

·         1964 fellowship from the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Fund

·         Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury at the 1957 Berlin International Film Festival (for composing the music for the movie Kabuliwala).

·         UNESCO International Music Council (1975)

·         Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (1991)

·         Praemium Imperiale for music from the Japan Art Association (1997)

·         Polar Music Prize (1998)

·         Five Grammy Awards

o    1967: Best Chamber Music Performance – West Meets East (with Yehudi Menuhin)

o    1973: Album of the Year – The Concert for Bangladesh (with George Harrison)

o    2002: Best World Music Album – Full Circle: Carnegie Hall 2000

o    2013: Best World Music Album – The Living Room Sessions Pt. 1

o    Lifetime Achievement Award received at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards

·         Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score along with George Fenton for the film Gandhi.

·         Posthumous nomination in the 56th Annual Grammy Awards for his album "The Living Room Sessions Part 2".

·         First recipient of the Tagore Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to cultural harmony and universal values (2013; posthumous)

Other honours and tributes

·         1997 James Parks Morton Interfaith Award

·         American jazz saxophonist John Coltrane named his son Ravi Coltrane after Shankar.

·         On 7 April 2016 (his 96th birthday), Google published a Google Doodle to honour his work. Google commented: "Shankar evangelized the use of Indian instruments in Western music, introducing the atmospheric hum of the sitar to audiences worldwide. Shankar's music

     popularised the fundamentals of Indian music  including raga, a melodic form and widely influenced popular music in the 1960s and 70s.

Pandit Ravi Shankar, one of the great national personalities was and will remain a jewel of our country. His devotion to Indian classical music and popularising the same in the western music world was a contribution to our country. His music spread the fame of our country in the world. His contribution could be noticed from the international awards he had received. With Relevance to this paper the list of films for which he directed Music is given below.

1.     Anuradha 1960

2.     Aparajito  1956

3.     Chappaqua an American drama by Conard Rooks 1967

4.     Dharti ke lal 1946

5.     The Flute and the Arrow by Arne Sucksdorff on 26 December 1957 in Sweden

6.     Gandhi Directed by Richard Attenborough 30 Nov 1982(India)

7.     Kabuliwala 1957

8.     Meera 1979

9.     Parash Pathar 1958

10. Pathar Panchali 26 August 1955 by Satyajit Ray

11. Raga Documentary in 1971

12. The world of Apu 01 May 1959 ( A film by Satyajit Ray)

Ravi Shankar, with a life time achievement in music and bringing fame to the country and recognized by the world as an authority for Indian music breathed his last on 11 December 2012.