On Sunday 1 August, 1971, a unique charity concert was
organized at the most high profile centre of American music – New York’s
Madison Square Garden. This concert, planned for the victims of a devastating
cyclone and ongoing liberation war in Bangladesh, was the first charity concert
ever to be held. The concert, a brainchild of Pandit Ravi Shankar and George
Harrison, was initially planned at a much lower scale but enthusiastic response
from fellow musicians forced them to look for a bigger stage. Among the
participants that day apart from Ravi Shankar and Harrison were Bob Dylan, Eric
Clapton and Ringo Starr. A record crowd cheered them through the day, the
organizers managed to raise huge amount of aid and for years afterwards,
records of the concert continued on the top grossers’ list. But for India,
there was a much larger gain. This concert was organized at a time when
President Nixon’s administration was hardening its stance against New Delhi in
the ongoing dispute between India and Pakistan over Bangladesh and despatched a
US warship to Bay of Bengal. But this concert helped to change the perception –
overnight everyone knew about the plight of Bangladesh and there was a discernible
change in public mood. Decades before concepts like cultural diplomacy and soft
power entered our foreign policy vocabulary, Indian classical music became one
of India’s greatest soft power tools in the West and Pandit Ravi Shankar our
most important cultural ambassador.
It, of course,
should not come as a surprise for someone, who made his stage debut at the age
of 11 in Paris, albeit as a dancer! Ravi Shankar's elder brother Uday Shankar
was the original Indian cultural ambassador, pioneering Indian performing arts
tradition in Europe and America. Uday Shankar presented the first vision of
Indian classical dance to the Western audience in the 1920s in partnership with
the celebrated Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. Later on he established his own
dance company Uday Shankar Dance Troupe
with his signature creative dance along with noted French dancer Simkie and a
number of classical Indian dancers and musicians. Their presentation of Indian
themes along with typical Indian music and dance in European style ballet format
was the first taste of Indian performing arts for the West. Ravi Shankar toured
with this troupe from a young age as a dancer and got his exposure to Western
art and classical music and of course cinema, which remained his lifelong
passion.
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| Uday Shankar with Anna Pavlova |
It was a time
when Indian classical dance traditions - so far confined to temples and houses
of pleasure - were being given a new respectability by two men - Rabindranath
at Shantiniketan and Uday Shankar, first in Europe and then briefly at Almora
(where among his students were Guru Dutt and Zohra Sehgal). Yet young Ravi
decided to opt for instrumental music and shifted to Maihar with Baba Alauddin
Khan, who was a part of the Uday Shankar's troupe. He re-emerged on the
classical musical scene after a rigorous ten year long training at Maihar and
joined IPTA and then worked as music director of All India Radio between 1949
and 1955. It was during this period he composed the now famous music of Sare Jahan Se Achcha. He was also the
music director for Satyajit Ray’s Apu
trilogy and a number of Hindi movies including Anuradha and Godaan.
Since 1956, he relentlessly toured around the world almost till the very end,
often performing with famous musicians from other traditions like classical
orchestra, Jazz, Pop and Rock. His association with the Beatles made him a
household name in the West. From the 1970s, he was acknowledged as one of the
greatest living cultural icons of the world.
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| Ravi shnakar and George Harrison |
