Ravi Shankar: All things must pass, too

MANILA, Philippines - About the transient nature of human existence, legendary sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar influenced George Harrison’s post-Beatles song, All Things Must Pass. Timothy Leary’s psychedelic adaptation of the Tao Te Ching,  Harrison’s love for Eastern music and philosophy was ignited by Shankar’s tutorial of the Indian instrument with distinctive timbre and resonance that included learning the music’s philosophy.

At 92, Shankar has completed his cycle of life at a San Diego medical facility.

Last year, he was treated for upper respiratory and heart ailments. The heart-valve replacement surgery he underwent recently failed to extend his life. Wife Sukanya and daughter Anoushka, also a sitar virtuoso, were by his bedside. Jazz singer Norah Jones is also his daughter by concert producer Sue Jones.

Neil Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, had informed Shankar before he died that Shankar would receive Grammy Award for a lifetime achievement in February.

Shankar’s immeasurable influence on classical and contemporary music led the Beatles to their multi-cultural phase that became the benchmark of their maturity period that produced the masterpiece albums Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Harrison encountered the sitar during the shoot of Help!, the Beatles’ second film. Its rudiments provided Norwegian Wood’s florid instrumental opening.

Hooked on its exoticism, finding an instrument that turned his distinctive contribution of Beatles’ art of song, Harrison sought professional tutorial from Shankar, widely acknowledged as India’s master player of the instrument. 

With record producer George Martin’s implorations for greater experimentations, Shankar was Harrison’s main influence to John Lennon’s Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney’s the Beach Boys, with Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound as recording model. 

Harrison played the sitar in his self-compositions as Love You Too and Within You Without You. In the latter, Harrison played with the Asian Music Circle instead of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison following a seven-week stay in India with Shankar. This recalled the act of McCartney who recorded Yesterday with a string quartet instead of the Beatles members.

Because of his guitar virtuosity, Harrison eventually learned to play the lead guitar to sound like the expressive style of a sitar in While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Something where he substituted the sitar with a gamaks.

For Harrison and Shankar’s two-concert series, The Concert for Bangladesh, for the benefit of the refugees of the genocide in East Pakistan, opened with an Indian music suite with the master-playing sitar.

When Harrison died in 2001, Shankar led Concert for George, Harrison’s first anniversary tribute at the Royal Albert Hall in London with McCartney, Ringo Starr and best friend Eric Clapton with his son Dhani Harrison as playing guitar. As usual, it opened with an Indian music with Shankar and Anoushka playing sitar separately.

Shankar’s body might have transitioned but his soul lives in classical and contemporary music.