Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India was an Indian classical music revue led by sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar intended for Western concert audiences and performed in 1974. Its presentation was the first project undertaken by the Material World Charitable Foundation, set up the previous year by ex-Beatle George Harrison. Long a champion of Indian music, Harrison also produced an eponymous studio album by the Music Festival orchestra, which was released in 1976 on his Dark Horse record label. Both the CD format of the Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India album and a DVD of their performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London were issued for the first time on the 2010 Shankar–Harrison box set Collaborations.
The sixteen members of Shankar's Music Festival from India included Hariprasad Chaurasia, Shivkumar Sharma, Alla Rakha, T.V. Gopalkrishnan, L. Subramaniam, Sultan Khan and Lakshmi Shankar. Several of the musicians began successful international careers as a result of their participation, and all are recognised as being among the late twentieth century's finest exponents of Indian classical music. The ensemble played in Europe in September and October 1974 before touring North America with Harrison and his band during the final two months of the year.
Background and concept
Although he had composed and performed orchestral works in India, as All India Radio's music director between 1949 and 1956,Lavezzoli, p. 50. Ravi Shankar's only similar project for Western audiences had been when he toured America with his Festival from India orchestra in 1968.Shankar, pp. 203–04, 324. The tour featured musicians such as Shivkumar Sharma, Jitendra Abhisheki and Palghat Raghu,"Excerpts from a conversation between Raviji and Satish and Shashi Vyas, June 2007", The Ravi Shankar Foundation (retrieved 9 February 2012). with Shankar's regular jugalbandi partner, sarodya Ali Akbar Khan, joining the ensemble for their concerts in California.Stephen M.H. Braitman, "Pop Sounds from India Rock Greek: Ravi Shankar, Greek Theatre, Los Angeles", Van Nuys News, 30 June 1968; available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required).Staff writer, "Shankar, Indians To Play In Festival", The Stanford Daily, 5 July 1968, p. 6 (retrieved 25 August 2015). The plan for the larger Music Festival from India took shape in January 1974, when his friend George Harrison visited Shankar in his home town of Benares.Leng, pp. 148, 165. Harrison attended a religious ceremony in honour of Shankar's new home, Hemangana, beside the River Ganges at Benares, after which he suggested that Shankar assemble an orchestra for concert tours of Europe and the United States.Shankar, p. 223. According to Harrison, the Music Festival was something that he himself had been wanting to stage "since about '67".Collaborations, p. 15. He was particularly inspired after hearing Shankar's orchestral piece Nava Rasa Ranga while in Bombay, where Harrison had recorded part of his 1968 solo album Wonderwall Music.Olivia Harrison, p. 302.
Unlike the Harrison-produced Shankar Family & Friends, a cross-cultural project recorded in 1973,Rodriguez, p. 237. the focus behind the new collaboration was to celebrate the traditional aspects of Indian classical music, both in concerts performed by the sixteen-piece Music Festival orchestra and in the studio.Lavezzoli, p. 195. Shankar would act as composer and conductor, rather than musician, and only play sitar on his famed ragas during the live performances. The presentation of the Music Festival was the first project undertaken by Harrison under the auspices of his Material World Charitable Foundation, one of the aims of which was to "sponsor diverse forms of artistic expression and to encourage the exploration of alternative life views and philosophies".Collaborations, p. 32.
Musicians Shankar gathered an impressive array of contributors for the project, whom he would describe decades later as "these wonderful musicians who are now superstars". Many of the players he had a musical history with already.Shankar, pp. 113, 222–23. Almost all of them are among the finest exponents of Indian classical musicRodriguez, p. 238. – flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia, tabla legend Alla Rakha, the multi-talented T.V. Gopalkrishnan on mridangam and vocals, South Indian violin virtuoso L. Subramaniam, sarangi master Sultan Khan, santoor pioneer Shivkumar Sharma, and Gopal Krishan, credited with the emergence of the vichitra veena in that musical genre. A sitarist and percussion player, Harihar Rao had been a student of Shankar's during the 1950s before winning a Fulbright scholarship and taking a position in the ethnomusicology department of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).Lavezzoli, pp. 294–95.
The featured singer was once more Lakshmi Shankar,Leng, p. 138. Shankar's sister-in-law and a noted Hindustani vocalist.Manjari Sinha, "Ageless artiste, timeless charm …", The Hindu, 24 March 2006 (retrieved 19 August 2014). Like Sharma, Rakha and Lakshmi had been among the members of Shankar's 1968 revue. For the first time in one of his projects, Shankar invited his niece Viji (Lakshmi's daughter), who joined her aunt, Kamala Chakravarty, as second vocalists to Lakshmi.
Rehearsals and recording Shankar and Harrison met again during the summer of 1974, in England, where Harrison arranged a house in London's Belgravia area for Shankar and the latter's partner, Chakravarty, while the other musicians were accommodated at the Imperial Hotel in Henley-on-Thames, west of London.Shankar, pp. 224, 268–69. Harrison had the orchestra personnel picked up from the hotel each day in a Mercedes stretch limousine previously owned by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.Shankar, p. 224. He later recalled the amusing sight of Rakha and the other traditionally dressed Indian musicians as they exited the vehicle on arrival at his Henley home, Friar Park.
Shankar composed new material specifically for the Music Festival and recorded it using Harrison's 16-track home studio facility, FPSHOT.Madinger & Easter, pp. 442, 443. Describing himself as "an improviser by nature", every day for three weeks Shankar would leave London and head west on the M4, during which he would write the music to be run through with the musicians that day in Friar Park's grand drawing room.Shankar, pp. 224, 305. Harrison remarked of the process: "It was amazing, because he'd sit there and say to one person, 'This is where you play,' and the next one, 'And you do this,' and 'You do that,' and they're all going, What? 'OK, one, two, three ...' And you'd think, 'This is going to be a catastrophe' – and it would be the most amazing thing." The principal sound engineer on the sessions, and Harrison's regular engineer at FPSHOT during this period, was Shankar's nephew Kumar,Leng, p. 146. with Phil McDonald assisting on "Raga Jait" and "Naderdani".Sleeve credits, Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India LP (Dark Horse Records, 1976; produced by George Harrison). Kumar Shankar joined the cast for publicity photos taken by Clive Arrowsmith in the house and grounds.Olivia Harrison, pp. 304–07, 397.George Harrison, plate XXXIX.
The orchestra rehearsed for their upcoming live performances at Friar Park also.Madinger & Easter, p. 442. Midway through the proceedings, on 6 September, Harrison held a press conference in London and announced plans for the Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India tour of Europe, lasting through into October.Badman, p. 131. A co-headlining North American tour would follow,Leng, pp. 147–48.Shankar, pp. 223, 225. for which Harrison, as the main attraction, was growing increasingly unprepared, such was his dedication to this project, and after having already lavished months of his time on The Place I Love by Splinter, another Dark Horse act.Olivia Harrison, p. 335.
Performance history
The programme for the concert performances was divided into two distinct parts. Shankar explained at the time:The first part is in the form of a panorama, depicting major stages in the evolution of classical and traditional Indian music, starting with the Vedic hymns and the music of the medieval period, and ending with the present day, touching briefly on all the intermediate forms such as alap, dhrupad, dhamar, khyal, tappa, tarana and chaturanga ... The second part begins with the semi-classical forms such as the devotional bhajan and the romantic and erotic thumri, ghazal, dadra, etc. and ends with the very lively and earthy folk style.Collaborations, p. 25.
True to the festival's title, the folk traditions of all the various regions of India were represented, in what was the first appearance by an Indian orchestra in Europe.Leng, p. 148. Similarly all-encompassing and educational were Naseem Khan's liner notes for the Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India studio album, serving as an introductory guide to the wide variety of Indian musical instruments on display. The album would be issued long after the European tour, however, due to the release of Shankar Family & Friends in September 1974.
The Royal Albert Hall performance on 23 September was the Music Festival's opening night,Terry Staunton, "Ravi Shankar & George Harrison – Collaborations", Record Collector, December 2010, p. 82 (retrieved 16 August 2014). after which the tour moved on to Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich and Copenhagen.Badman, p. 133. Harrison took to the stage in London and admitted to "feeling very nervous ... we're behind schedule",Concert Film, "Introduction by George Harrison", Music Festival from India – Live at the Royal Albert Hall DVD (Dark Horse Records, 2010; produced by Olivia Harrison; directed by Stuart Cooper). before introducing Shankar to the audience. The Royal Albert Hall concert was filmed by Stuart Cooper,Pieper, p. 171. who had recently directed Harrison's Apple Films production Little Malcolm.Michael Simmons, "Cry for a Shadow", Mojo, November 2011, pp. 84, 85.
The brief European tour ended in October. The orchestra was then pared down to a sixteen-piece – omitting shehnai veteran Anant Lal and Kamala Chakravarty – for Shankar and Harrison's high-profile tour of the United States and Canada, which began at Vancouver's Pacific Coliseum on 2 November.Madinger & Easter, pp. 445, 447. Four days later, the tour played in San Francisco,Badman, p. 137. where some of the Indian musicians were also invited to perform at the Stone House, a historic building in Fairfax in Marin County.Liner notes, Sarangi: The Music of India CD (Rykodisc, 1988; produced by Mickey Hart & Zakir Hussain). Individual performances from this informal concert, by Sultan Khan and Hariprasad Chaurasia, were released on the albums Sarangi: The Music of India (1988)"Sarangi: The Music of India", Smithsonian Folkways (retrieved 6 August 2016).Trager, p. 328. and Venu (1989)."Venu", Smithsonian Folkways (retrieved 6 August 2016).
Shankar's ensemble faced some hostile audiences in North America,Olivia Harrison, pp. 298–99. who were more interested in hearing Harrison's musicShankar, p. 227.Rodriguez, p. 59. during what was, in 1974, the first tour there by a former Beatle since the band's 1966 visit.Madinger & Easter, p. 419.The Editors of Rolling Stone, pp. 34, 44, 126, 128. Author Peter Lavezzoli views this outcome as "unfortunate", since Shankar "had assembled an outstanding group of musicians".Lavezzoli, p. 196. Harrison biographer Simon Leng describes the orchestra as "the greatest collection of Indian musicians ever to tour America".Leng, p. 168. Although the focus of Shankar's set on this tour was to promote Shankar Family & Friends,Rodriguez, pp. 198, 237. selections from the Music Festival programme such as "Naderdani" were adapted for American and Canadian audiences.Madinger & Easter, p. 447. Commenting on the lack of appreciation for the orchestra at some of the concerts, drummer Jim Keltner later said: "Those people saw something very special."Lavezzoli, p. 205.
Album release