Extraordinary Music Pioneer Celebrated at SAI

Using photography, videos, rare poster art, walls of album covers and music, Chicago’s South Asia Institute (SAI) has mounted an exquisite retrospective on one of the world’s great musicians.  Ravi Shankar:  Ragamala to Rockstar reminds us of the phenomenal achievements one person can realize through the arts.  It also showcases the impact Indian classical music had upon the world when performed by an incomparable sitar virtuoso and prolific composer.

Last year would have marked the centennial of Shankar’s birth. This exhibition is a concise and sensitive walk through that life’s most revealing highlights.  The images, posters and colorful artifacts filling the gallery, along with text provided by Shankar’s biographer, allow you to comprehend the artistic immensity his life represents. 

In the United States, we have few examples of megastars whose careers start in childhood and whose fame and performance lives continue to glow brightly well into elderhood.  Shankar, born in 1920, had his first performance at Chicago’s Symphony Center in 1932 when he was 12.  Nearly 70 years later in 2001, he was conducting a farewell tour on the same stage; one that he came to know well.  He would continue performing throughout the world for another decade.

Americans who share Ravi Shankar’s cultural roots, and those who are drawn to the meditative serenity of the music he performed, likely enjoy a strong awareness of his rise to stardom as a multi-faceted artist.  Curated by Brian Keigher and Gaurav Mazumdar, the multi-media exhibition unfolds like a visual story that allows anyone to understand how this rocket was launched.  Here, the visual clues offered by photographs that are many decades old do their job in providing a sense of time and place.   You see a young boy being groomed to be a dancer and an accompanying musician in his older brother Uday’s celebrated and hugely successful dance troupe.  The dance company traveled the world and exposed the intelligent and open mind of a precocious child to the myriad influences of disparate cultures.

In the sports world, it may be more common to hear of men and women so gifted athletically that they must eventually choose just one direction to channel their talents.  A statement accompanying an image of Shankar as a dancer alludes to his being confronted with a similar decision; to choose dance or music.  He was only 19 when he decided on music and the true reason how and why he made that choice likely has many fathers.  By then his musical prowess had already been well recognized and his respect for his mentor and creative guide, Allaudin Khan, who urged him to choose, was immeasurable.

The choice of music and the influence it reaped fill the bulk of the exhibition.  Once the selection was made and the commitment to music became entrenched, Shankar expanded his creative reach and began to compose as well as build renown with the sitar.  Already quite comfortable with world, fluent in English and French and naturally magnanimous; in hindsight, his conquering the globe with his music seems predestined.

What can’t be seen through photographs or posters marking the highlights of any career is the direction of influence.  Images of Shankar with celebrated musical artists across a spectrum of genres, from rock and roll’s George Harrison to Yehude Menuhin, would suggest there may have been collaborative musical relationships between them.  In truth, Shankar never worked collaboratively with anyone outside his musical specialty; classic Indian music.  Both Harrison and Menuhin were drawn to the music’s unique reflective qualities and approached Shankar as enthusiasts who wanted to learn from him.  What they sensed is also what infected the world.  Commonly referred to as the Godfather of World Music, the high quality and artistic purity of Shankar’s music captivated music lovers on every continent.  The Pied Piper who introduced Europe, America and all points beyond to a virtuosity as sublime as it was undeniable, he became the ideal ambassador who stimulated the world’s receptivity to musical excellence hailing from unexpected places.  

Perhaps at his zenith in the late 60’s and throughout the 70’s, he’s the only artist who performed Woodstock, the Monterey International Jazz Festival and the Concert for Bangladesh.  Posters from the period recall those triumphs and carry with them a melancholy irony.  Boldly patterned and radiating the psychedelic excesses of the era, they imply something that Shankar adamantly opposed; the use of drugs.  Fortunately, the power of great music outlives its extraneous associations.  Ravi Shankar:  Ragamala to Rockstar proves how easily that’s done.

Ravi Shankar:  Ragamala to Rockstar:  A Retrospective on the Maestro’s Life in Music

Nov 6, 2021 – March 5, 2022

South Asia Institute

1925 S. Michigan Ave.

Chicago, IL  60616

http//www.saichicago.org