Le maître indien du sitar, Ravi Shankar, qui a influencé de nombreux musiciens occidentaux, des Beatles à Yehudi Menuhin en passant par John Coltrane, est décédé aux Etats-Unis à l’âge de 92 ans, a annoncé mercredi sa famille.
La musicien légendaire indien, Ravi Shankar, le « sitarman »-Photo:DR-
Le père de la chanteuse de jazz et pop-folk Norah Jones et de la sitariste Anoushka Shankar est mort dans un hôpital de San Diego, où il venait de subir une intervention chirurgicale pour le remplacement d’une valve cardiaque. Le Premier ministre indien, Manmohan Singh, a fait part de sa tristesse et évoqué la perte d' »un trésor national et d’un ambassadeur mondial de l’héritage culturel de l’Inde ».
« Une ère s’achève. La nation se joint à moi pour rendre hommage à son génie insurpassable, à son art et à son humilité », a ajouté le chef du gouvernement. Ravi Shankar, qui vivait en Californie, était né dans la ville sacrée de Bénarès, sur les bords du Gange, le 7 avril 1920. Il était issu d’une famille de brahmanes, la plus haute caste dans la complexe société traditionnelle hindoue. Le guitariste des Beatles, George Harrison, fut l’un de ses disciples dans les années 1960 et tous deux collaborèrent ensuite à plusieurs projets, notamment lors d’un concert de bienfaisance pour le Bangladesh en 1971. Harrison avait surnommé Ravi Shankar « le parrain de la World Music ». En plein mouvement hippie, curieux de sonorités originales et exotiques, Ravi Shankar s’était produit au festival de Woodstock (Etats-Unis) en 1969 aux côtés de Janis Joplin et Jimi Hendrix, devant près de 500.000 spectateurs.
Ravi Shankar et George Harrison dans les années 1970-Photo:DR-
John Coltrane, qui envisageait sa musique comme une quête spirituelle, tomba aussi sous le charme. Le saxophoniste de jazz, dont l’intérêt pour l’art de Ravi Shankar se manifesta au début des années 1960, prénomma son deuxième fils Ravi en hommage au virtuose. Bien que les sons envoûtants du sitar aient irrigué la pop music depuis quarante ans, en partie grâce à lui, ils gardent le même pouvoir de fascination chez les Occidentaux. Tantôt méditative, tantôt échevelée mais toujours raffinée et complexe, cette musique construite en partie sur l’improvisation est hypnotique et mystérieuse, propice au vagabondage de l’esprit, comme hors du temps. Il avait fait ses adieux aux scènes européennes en septembre 2008 à la salle Pleyel à Paris, devant un public hétéroclite et en présence notamment de la veuve de George Harrison.
Sa famille et la fondation Ravi Shankar ont expliqué que Ravi, triple lauréat des Grammy Awards et nommé par la France commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, souffrait de problèmes respiratoires et cardiaques. Selon son entourage, le musicien s’était produit pour la dernière fois en concert le 4 novembre à Long Beach, en Californie, avec sa fille Anoushka. Les détails concernant son inhumation seront annoncés sous peu, selon ses proches. Sanjay Sharma, dont la famille a fabriqué des sitars pour le musicien pendant plus de trente ans, se souvient d’un client exigeant mais apprécié. « C’était le plus grand innovateur en musique. Il voulait révolutionner le sitar. Travailler avec lui réclamait beaucoup d’exigence mais chaque moment passé avec lui était un cadeau précieux de Dieu pour notre famille », a-t-il confié à l’AFP.-AFP
Sitar legend Ravi Shankar dies at 92
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones experimented with the sitar and helped popularise Indian music. But Ravi Shankar knew western audiences could never fully understand it. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones experimented with the sitar and helped popularise Indian music. But Ravi Shankar knew western audiences could never fully understand it.
Legendary indian musician, Ravi Shankar, he made History-copyright: All rights reserved-
Ravi Shankar was a virtuoso sitar player long before he became a cult for a drug-fuelled hippy generation that found the exquisite music he plucked from the strings a perfect accompaniment to the consumption of marijuana and LSD. Had technology been what it is now, plugged ears would have been listening to him all the way from London to Kathmandu.
The Beatles, who flirted with Indian mysticism for a while (provoking some delicious satire from Private Eye, which called the Maharishi « Veririchi Lotsamoney Yogi Bear »), became seriously fascinated by the sitar and George Harrison took lessons in Indian classical music. The results were limited, Norwegian Wood probably ahead of the others. Not to be left behind, Brian Jones experimented with the instrument as well in Paint It Black. The fad didn’t last too long. The Beatles and Stones moved on to other things. As with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in later years, the « fusion » between west and east was only partially successful. But the positives should not be underestimated. The Beatles’ affair with Indian music helped project it to a global audience. There was rarely an empty seat at Shankar’s concerts in the United States and western Europe.
His Bengali parents had inculcated a love of music and culture while their boys were very young. Uday Shankar, the older brother, was a very fine classical dancer and choreographer. He had danced with Anna Pavlova in Paris during the 20s and he rarely compromised his art in order to please audiences unfamiliar with Kathakali and other classical Indian dances. The younger brother was the same in his own field.
« A raga, » Ravi Shankar explained to his illustrious fans in the west, « is a scientific, precise, subtle and aesthetic melodic form with its own peculiar ascending and descending movement consisting of either a full seven-note octave, or a series of six or five notes in a rising or falling structure called the Arohana and Avarohana. It is the subtle difference in the order of notes, an omission of a dissonant note, an emphasis on a particular note, the slide from one note to the other … that demarcate one raga from the other. »
The response of Harrison and Jones was not recorded, but even if they understood what he was saying it left no trace in their music or the lyrics. The raga did not dominate Sgt Pepper and as the radical music critic of the 70s Richard Merton pointed out in a startling intervention in the New Left Review of all places, the distinction of the Stones lay elsewhere. For him, Under My Thumb, Stupid Girl, Back Street Girl or Yesterday’s Papers were targeting sexual exploitation: « The enormous merit – and audacity – of the Stones is to have repeatedly and consistently defied what is a central taboo of the social system: mention of sexual inequality. They have done so in the most radical and unacceptable way possible: by celebrating it. » All that can be said on this front is that making love while listening to Under My Thumb might have been more pleasurable to some men. Women would undoubtedly have preferred the slow rising movement of the Arohana.
It was the great violinist of the western classical tradition, Yehudi Menuhin, who understood Shankar immediately and demonstrated this in a series of joint concerts. I was present at one of them. The occasion was affecting and enjoyable. How could it not be with these two virtuosos in command of the evening? It did not work for me on the musical level.
The origins of Indian classical music, not unlike their western counterparts, lie in the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures of 2,000 years ago. The human voice deployed to recite the Vedas and later aid the temple dancers was paramount before any instruments emerged. During the medieval period the entry of Islam in the subcontinent brought with it a Persian tradition of poetry, painting and music that spread from Afghanistan southwards. Melody and rhythm, rather than harmony and counterpoint, dominated the music from the east.
The Indian tradition remained oral, each composition a gift from the guru to his pupil, and hereditary musical families still dominate classical music in south Asia. Shankar was both pleased and amused by his sudden rise to fame and iconic status in the west. His purist colleagues in India were disdainful. Not him. He spoke of how pleased he was by « the openness, willingness to learn and sincere enthusiasm of western audiences ». He meant this, of course, and it was true. But he also knew that the innate knowledge of south Asian music-lovers could not be easily reproduced elsewhere. An all-night open-air concert in lush surroundings on a summer night in Lahore or Delhi, Trivandrum or Dhaka, with the voice of divas competing with the instruments and reaching a crescendo as the dawn light intrudes and they combine for a finale, has no equivalent in the west. Here the constraints of time and money determine the length of a concert.
Indian classical music was born when time barely existed. It developed further within the structures of royal courts and a system of patronage where the ruler or the feudal master determined all. Satyajit Ray‘s cinematic masterpiece The Music Room conveys the obsession and the flavour of that period. Much has changed in South Asia, of course, but all-night concerts still take place. When I was introduced to Ravi Shankar in London after a concert in the early 60s, he he looked at me and asked: « Well? » « Not the same as in our part of the world, » was the only reply I could muster. He laughed, a deep throaty laugh. « That it will never be. » In The Guardian
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