Indian Composer Ravi Shankar Dies at 92

Three time Grammy Award winning composer Ravi Shankar passed away Tuesday afternoon in San Diego, California at the age of 92.  Shankar was admitted to Scripps Memorial Hospital last week after complaining of difficulty breathing.

Shankar is best known for scoring the 1982 biographical film Gandhi alongside British composer George Fenton. The duo would be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score for the film but lost to John Williams’ score of E.T.

“He was legend of legends,” Shivkumar Sharma, a santoor player who formally performed with Shankar, told Indian media. “Indian classical was not at all known in the Western world. He was the musician who had that training … the ability to communicate with the Western audience.”

George Harrison considered Shankar as the “godfather of world music” and continued to be an inspiration to the former Beatle until his death in 2001.

His close relationship with Harrison helped shoot the Indian sitarist to superstardom. Harrison added Shankar to many high profile concert bills of the day including a four-hour set at Monterey Pop Festival and the opening day of Woodstock.

Shankar was surprised how Americans took to his music.

“I was shocked to see people dressing so flamboyantly. They were all stoned. To me, it was a new world,” Shankar told Rolling Stone after performing at Monterey Pop Festival.

Shankar would become a pioneer in the concept of rock benefit concerts as well. In 1971 he organized The Concert for Bangladesh alongside former Beatle George Harrison.

In what Shankar would dub “one of the most moving and intense musical experiences of the century,” The Concert for Bangladesh was held on August 1, 1971 in front of 40,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The show was organized to raise international awareness and relief efforts for East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The concert included former Beatles members George Harrison and Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and Badfinger.

In 1979 Shankar fathered Grammy Award winning singer Norah Jones with concert promoter Sue Jones. Although Shankar became estranged from Sue Jones throughout the 1980s and would not see his daughter Norah for over and decade, the two would later re-establish contact.

Norah and her mother released a statement following Shankar’s death saying, “Although it is a time for sorrow and sadness, it is also a time for all of us to give thanks and to be grateful that we were able to have him as part of our lives.”