Happy 100th birthday, Ravi Shankar (Beatles)

Indian Sun (Oliver Craske)

Psychedelic innovator for the Beatles, father of Nora Jones, Ravi ("Sun" in Sanskrit) Shankar revolutionized Western rock music in the 1960s and ever since. He would have been 100 today, and his influence lives on.

NPR covers the cultural shift that took place when Shankar taught the Beatles' George Harrison how to play the sitar, an ancient classical Indian instrument.

Enduring afterglow of Shankar's life in music
Bilal Qureshi (NPR's All Things Considered, April 7, 2020)

News with a Jewish American slant

Ravi Shankar was hugely important in popularizing Indian classical music in Western pop music. He would have turned 100 years old today. Indian Sun is a new authoritative biography of the Indian musician Ravi Shankar's life, published to coincide with this year's centenary of his birth.

In a career that spanned decades and continents, he singlehandedly introduced Western audiences to the centuries-old classical tradition of Indian ragas -- a complex system of melodies performed as longform improvisations by an instrumentalist and an accompanying percussionist.

He inspired legions of Western and Eastern fans and created a model for stretching the boundaries of an ancient musical tradition. Biographer Oliver Craske traces the full breadth of Shankar's life beyond the known flashpoints of his career -- icon of the 1960s, teacher of George Harrison, and a tour-de-force set at the Monterey Pop festival. More

The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" psychedelic acid bootleg, autumn 1965

Hipster Norman Maslov showcases his Shankar collection, April 7, 2020