Ravi Shankar: A Brief Biography

In his early years, Ravi Shankar was so much influenced by his elder brother Uday. It was at the end of 1929, his brother Uday came back to India after almost 10 years in Europe. Uday had gone to London hoping to become a painter, had received his degree, and actually turned out to be quite promising. But his artistic talents changed.He turned to dance. His father was doing some experiments with Indian ballet in the middle 20s and he asked to Uday to help him with some choreographical ideas and other aspects of production. His career as a dancer began in a musical production that their father staged in London in 1924.That was the first Indian ballet produced in the West. Anna Pavlova, the famous Russian ballerina,came

He earned a few small roles to dance with Uday.. He was the Monkey God and wore a mask and also danced the little part of the snake-devil . As he grew taller, physically and as his dancing improved, he was given more important roles, and was already recognized by the critics for his dancing ability. At the age of 16 he had first solo dance, which he choreographed himself. Its subject was Chitra Sena,a character in the court of the God Indra, who was a famous gandharva or celestial dancer-musician. His solo was based principally on the Kathak style of dancing from northern India, where a lot of of fast, intricate footwork and body movements are used. The solo got wonderful notices from the critics and he admired himself for his dancing performances. Often while they were rehearsing in Paris during those first years, famous western musicians would come to watch them or to talk to Uday about music. Some of them are Georges Enesco,Yehudi Menuhin(who wrote introduction to Ravi Shankar’s book ‘MY LIFE MY MUSIC’),Andres Segovica(master of the classical guitar),Kreisler(violinist) etc. He had the good fortune to listen to the very best artist’ performance .He got a clear understanding of the Western Classical music though his interests were not limited to classical

Ravi Shankar heard them say that their music was monotonous and not pleasing to the ear and complained that it was too repetitive. He realized later that one of the things that upset them most was the lack of modulation in their troupe’s music and the fact that they do not employ harmony or counterpoint. He was both hurt and infuriated when he heard what some of Western artists had to say and he was sorry they could not understand the greatness of Indian music. This lack of understanding motivated him , in later years,to explain Indian music and talk about some of its characteristics to his own concert