Ananda was born in Almora, Uttar Pradesh in 1942. The son of dancers Uday and Amala Shankar and the nephew of Pandit Ravi Shankar, he was raised in an artistically creative atmosphere. He studied sitar with Dr. Lalmani Mishra in Banaras at the Hindu University. In the late 1960s he traveled to the West Coast of America when flower power was at its height and the pop world was fascinated by all things sitar. Informal jam sessions with Jimi Hendrix in 1969 soon resulted in attention from producers at Warner Reprise. The ensuing LP Ananda Shankar saw the young musician flexing his skills as composer and arranger. It featured amazing cover versions of the Rolling Stones’ Jumping Jack Flash and The Doors’ Light My Fire, ensuring the record’s cult success then, and to this day.
Ananda returned to India in the 1970s to pursue his personal musical vision. He was one of the earliest to combine traditional Indian instrumentation with Western music, blending mrdangam with guitar and sitar, and soradand veena with jazz and rock drums. On the album Ananda Shankar And His Music it all fell into place. Two tracks in particular, Streets Of Calcutta and Dancing Drums are absolute classics of their time and still sound totally fresh today. Wild rhythmic patterns from rock and pop collided and colluded with gorgeous Indian melodies. His band Mudavis toured the world to great acclaim and he continued to make records, although he quickly branched out into compositional work for radio, film and television, along with hugely successful musical direction for his wife’s, Tanusree, internationally admired dance company. The pop and rock world is well known for it’s ephemeral nature and, in the West, Ananda became part of the secret history of pop culture. A story waiting to be told.
In the 1990s the Shankar back catalogue became sought after for its rich vein of eclectic breaks and beats. Those wild rhythmic patterns were perfect for hip-hop and drum and bass heads. But in England a more serious appreciation of his contribution to whirled music emerged at club nights like Anokha in London’s East End. DJ, musician and producer Sam Zaman, aka State Of Bengal, played a seven hour vinyl tribute to Ananda at one legendary session. Some long-deleted tracks from the 1960s and 1970s began appearing on official and not so official compilation albums. The original vinyl began to fetch very silly prices.
It was in the mid-1990s when club owners Alan James and Pete Lawrence came across the Shankar grooves. Alan knew a close friend of Shankar named Piali Ray at the Midland Arts Centre in Birmingham, and the two conceived a plan to bring Ananda over to Great Britain to rehearse a live touring project, which would later become Walking On. WOMAD booked the project and Real World whisked it into the studio during Recording Week. State of Bengal were immediately and naturally brought in as musical partners adding a unique and up to the minute dimension to what was already an amazing fusion experience. Sam Zaman had been listening to Ananda since his early teens and sometimes even remembered tunes that the maestro had forgotten.
State of Bengal’s eclectic mix of Indian classical music with breakbeat, hip-hop, tabla driven beats and melodic vocals seemed perfect as a 1990s response to Ananda’s sound. Fresh from work with Bjork, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Massive Attack, Sam Zaman found time off from making his own album to throw himself fully into the project.
The tour was a crazy and glorious affair. After three weeks rehearsal – at the start of which Ananda and Sam met literally, for the first time – the band opened at Brighton Concorde and were overwhelmed by the welcome. The place rocked. The London show was a sell-out mad success. The party rolled into WOMAD to perform an emotional set in the Siam tent. On the way, vans broke down, houses set on fire and Ananda played as many practical jokes as he could to liven up the already hectic proceedings. When lightning hit the Big Room at Real World on the last day of recording they knew the music would be electric. The group said their last goodbyes at Heathrow, after seven weeks that had changed all of their lives. Little did they know that it would be the last wave.
Ananda used to say: “My dream is to break barriers, any kind of barrier – through music, love, affection and compassion. I have this dream of musicians from all over the world playing for an audience all over the world. When we are all here we are one, and when we go out I am sure we will all be one.”
Ananda Shankar died March 26, 1999.
Discography:
Ananda Shankar (Reprise, 1970)
Ananda Shankar and His Music (EMI India, 1975)
India Remembers Elvis, EP (EMI India, 1977)
Missing You (EMI India, 1977)
A Musical Discovery of India8 (EMI India, 1978)
Sa-Re-Ga Machan (EMI India, 1981)
2001 (EMI India, 1984)
Temptations (Gramaphone Company of India, 1992)
Shubh – The Auspicious (1995)
Ananda (EMI India, 1999)
Arpan (EMI India, 2000)
Walking On (Real World, 2000)
Ananda Shankar: A Life in Music – The Best of the EMI Years (Times Square, 2005)
Author: Angel Romero
Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.
