Word: shankar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Clad in high-collared vests and baggy cotton trousers, the three barefoot Indian musicians sat down cross-legged on an Oriental carpet on the stage of Judson Memorial Hall at Manhattan's Washington Square. Glancing at the drummer to the right of him, Ravi Shankar cradled his sitar in his arms, and with slender, agile fingers began to coax from its steel strings a piercingly plaintive, twangy melody. Beside him the tabla (drum) thrummed and rataplanned a shifting, syncopated beat, and behind him a four-stringed, unfretted lute named the tamboura thinly droned its hypnotic accompaniment. Thus Sitarist Shankar...
...infinitely complex music which bears some slight resemblance to modern jazz and Schoenberg's twelve-tone system. The wonder to Westerners is that the ancient music of India is also the nation's most popular music. It has caught on so rapidly during the last decade that Shankar and other top artists (who get up to $2,000 a performance) have no difficulty drawing crowds of 40,000 to open-air music festivals...
Benares-born Ravi Shankar, a younger brother of famed Dancer Uday Shankar (TIME, Nov. 22, 1948), started mastering his difficult art when he was 18. He has written movie scores and ballets (including one based on Nehru's Discovery of India), is working to modernize Indian musical techniques, i.e., standardize instruments and notation. But he despairs of ever accomplishing true mastery of the sitar. "It is like driving through a mist," he says. "The more you drive, the more you realize the road is still there...
...NITIN SHANKAR...
Died. Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, 63, governor of Bombay, former (1947-1952) secretary-general of India's Ministry of External Affairs; of a cerebral hemorrhage; in Bombay. In 1941 Bajpai became the first agent-general from India to the U.S., supported the Allied war effort when it was receiving lukewarm backing from Gandhi and other Indians...