Ritmo Caliente

Concert Preview

By Mark Towns

For many listeners today, the name Ravi Shankar may be familiar, but the full scope of his influence is easy to forget. In the 1960s, Shankar became one of the first artists to bring Indian classical music to Western rock and jazz audiences. His performances during the counterculture era—including his appearance at the legendary Woodstock Festival—introduced countless listeners to the hypnotic sound of the sitar and the rich musical language of Indian ragas.

For those unfamiliar, a raga isn’t just a scale or a tune. It’s more like a musical framework with its own personality—certain notes emphasized, others avoided, unfolding slowly and expressively as the musicians explore its mood. The result can feel almost meditative, with melodies that stretch and evolve in ways that can be both deeply spiritual and rhythmically electrifying. When Western audiences first encountered these sounds during the “hippie days” of the late ’60s, it was nothing short of mind-expanding.

That legacy continues with the Ravi Shankar Ensemble, a multi-generational group of world-class musicians dedicated to performing Shankar’s compositions. On their debut tour, the ensemble presents a special program curated by Sukanya Shankar and Anoushka Shankar, incorporating visual material from the Ravi Shankar archives alongside a dynamic selection of his music.

The lineup features sitarist Shubhendra Rao, tabla virtuoso Anubrata Chatterjee, mridangam master B. C. Manjunath, flutist Ravichandra Kulur, violinist and vocalist Padma Shankar, and sarod player Aayush Mohan.

For jazz listeners especially, Shankar’s music holds a natural appeal. Like jazz, it thrives on improvisation, deep listening, and a shared sense of musical exploration. Hearing these musicians interpret Shankar’s compositions offers a chance to experience a tradition that helped open Western ears more than half a century ago—and continues to resonate today.

As Shankar himself once said, music “transcends all languages and barriers.” More than fifty years after those groundbreaking performances in the 1960s, the sound of the sitar still carries that same sense of discovery.