She is a beautiful image of her father and the more one gets to know the multi talented 24 year old daughter of sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, the more one is struck by her forthrightness and her strength of character. There is indeed a lot more to Anoushka Shankar than just being her father’s daughter.
A musician who excels both at sitar and the piano, a writer, and actress, today Anoushka has indeed risen to greater heights with a new album written, produced and arranged by her. The album “ Rise” showcases the talent of many artists, many genres of music and instruments and has already won a nomination at the Grammies in the contemporary world music section.
In an exclusive interview with Kavita Chhibber, Anoushka Shankar talks about her life, her music, George Harrison, the negative stories in the press splashed by her mother’s ex-husband, her sister Norah Jones’ relationship with the Shankars, and much more.
What are your earliest memories of music?
It was before I really started learning music formally. I remember singing with my mom. I have always been interested in music but it was the piano that I was drawn to. I never really felt an active desire to play the sitar and when I did, I did not like it initially. It was a very difficult instrument, your legs get tired and the strings would cut through my fingers, but my father made it so interesting for me..each lesson would be filled with anecdotes, creating pictures in my mind, about each raga, especially when I was younger and slowly I began to like it a lot. After a period of time, even though I am as accomplished on piano, I developed tendonitis, in my right hand and had to stop for a while, and then slowly lost interest in the piano. I just can’t bring myself to play the piano now with the same enthusiasm; it’s heart breaking to see yourself playing an instrument you were really good at, badly.
You made your professional debut at 13. These days, there is frequent criticism of how the young artists of today, are thrust in to the lime light years before they are really ready or accomplished in what they are training in.
Well, my debut cannot really be called a professional debut per se. It was really more to celebrate my father’s 75th birthday It wasn’t as if they were trying to launch my career and say, look here, we have this child prodigy we want to show off. Actually 40 of his disciples had flown down to perform in his honor. I was his youngest student, and they thought it would be very touching, and really the best birthday present a father could have. It went off very well, and after that we had similar birthday celebrations in different cities where I performed, but for a very short time. It was simple stuff and a lot of fun. We started doing more and more shows together, and it did become a serious thing about a year later. That was when I was signed up to release my first CD.
You have become an integral part of Ravi ji’s tours since the past few years and have performed with the top notch musicians like Zubin Mehta, Jean Pierre Rampal, and your father wrote a piece for cello and sitar specially for you to perform with world famous cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. How has the experience been, and is it harder to perform with or without dad, on the same stage?
Yes dad wrote an amazing piece for Rostropovich and me. All these people, Zubin Mehta, Yehudi Menhuin, Jean Pierre Ramphal were close friends. I grew up calling them uncle, and performing with me for them was like having their little daughter perform with them. They were all so loving and comforting and would wink at me encouragingly when they thought no one was watching. I have been very lucky that way. As far as dad is concerned, it is not so scary performing with him these days but it is always intimidating to be on the same stage as him, playing with him. It terrifies me to even think of making a mistake and having him hear it. I’d hate that more than anything. There is an amazing spiritual bond between dad and me and between mom and dad and mom and I. At any given time, dad will know what is going on in my mind without me uttering a word and vice versa.
Is it true that when you want to confide in dad and not let mom know what’s going on you talk to him in French, and when it’s the other way round, you talk to mom in Tamil, so dad doesn’t know what is going on?
(She laughs uproariously) Yes it is so very convenient. Actually it may sound cheesy, but my mom is my best friend. She is the one who played a major part in bringing me up until the age of seven. Even now if my father is upset with me about something, he will tell my mom, and she will talk to me. My mom and I talk about every thing but dad is not quite so vocal, so with him we don’t talk, we feel. He is very very private and I keep trying to make him open up, as it is not very healthy to internalize so much.
Your parents also decided to send you to a Public School, instead of a private one.
And in a way it has been a great experience. In a public school if you put on airs, you are in trouble. In fact you have to go out of your way to act extra normal, extra down to earth to be accepted.
Ravi ji said that you have an uncanny ability to reproduce anything he plays, and he often improvises even while doing a duet with you and you catch up quickly.
A good 90 percent of what my father plays on stage is improvisation, so it is quite a Herculean task playing a duet with him. I am constantly staring at him all the time, picking things up as he continues to improvise and that is why now playing solo is such a wonderful experience for me , because it gives me the opportunity to discover myself a lot more.
Your first three CDs were all traditional classical music and featured solo performances by you. With “Rise” you have broken new grounds in more ways than one. When we had spoken earlier a couple of years ago I had commented, that while your earlier cds were technically sound, they lacked soul, though one saw a steady improvement. That has changed tremendously.
I started playing and performing at such a young age, so the focus was a lot on technical perfection, even though I was learning to feel the music and the emotional aspect of it from my father on the side. I was so in the public eye and always under scrutiny that I became very careful and conscious of that. I think as a result of that, improvisation came at a later stage for me.
Today I think my growth as a musician has come as a result of my own personal journey and where I’m today in terms of maturity and being comfortable in my own skin.
When I am performing with my father or playing his compositions, I still focus on what he wants from me and play accordingly, but when I perform solo, it’s different. I can never take away from the fact that my father has an immense influence on who I am as a musician, but he has given me the freedom also to be my own person.
Let’s talk about Rise. You were supposed to be on this one year sabbatical, and here we are with an album that has earned itself a Grammy nomination. Not only is it heart warming to see an artist who showcases the talent of others instead of hogging the stage just for herself, it’s also pretty awesome to see you do this totally on your own. It must have been tough to handle so many different artists.
Well when I started to think about it, I knew this was going to be an ensemble album. I must admit I didn’t plan to have so many different artists on it, or that I would play such a minor role in some of the pieces but as I went along, I was so excited by what these artists brought to the album, that I often forgot about my own work.
It was extremely hard every step of the way to put this album together, as I was working with artists in different age groups with different temperaments, unique caliber and stature. I was also recording in five different cities around the world. The instruments didn’t match and often we worked on the computer going note by note to create a match on every level. For example “ Voice of the Moon” is actually four different pieces where each instrument was recorded separately and then made to flow smoothly. I wanted to incorporate everything I reached out for, but without making it sound contrived.
Then “Beloved” was tough, because I don’t have much experience in writing lyrics and I don’t speak Hindi very well. So I had to write it in English and then have some one translate it and also make sure that the translation reflected what I was trying to say.
“Ancient love” remains my favorite, because the more we added to it the more it flowed.
The challenge was, that while we were recording it all over the place and not together, how to make it sound organic and smooth. I ended up editing a lot to find that balance, just that right blend. But it worked. Hopefully, I will be able to use the edited out material elsewhere. I did that for a beautiful documentary “Ancient Marks,” by world famous photo journalist Chris Rainier who I adore. He was making this interesting documentary on the origin of tattoos and body markings and really liked what I was recording at that time, so I switched gears and finished recording for Ancient Marks, and then readapted the piece and put it back on my album. In spite of all the various instruments and music style the album still has a very Indian heart.
I’m really proud of the fact that this album is completely my own, from the very inception to the end. It wasn’t a record label that asked me to do it, it wasn’t a project that my parents put together and I worked on. I wasn’t leaning on any one and I was involved in all aspects of its creation. I have always loved the organizational aspects of the projects I have done earlier with my father, so I enjoyed producing it as well as arranging it.
You have a pretty melodious voice. With all the comparisons with your sister Norah Jones, did you not think of singing on it?
Singing, on one level is not what I tend to gravitate towards naturally and so I wouldn’t do it for the heck of it. If I’m recording a piece which may require some singing I may do it. For this album, the complex and intricate songs that I wrote, required a professional singer and as a producer my first concern was to do what is best for the album. I think the songs sound beautiful because they were rendered by people who excel at singing.
Ever since Norah Jones burst on to the music scene with her first album and her relationship with her father, the Indian media especially, has had a field day, talking about her supposed turbulent relationship with your father, his silence at not acknowledging her in the early years. If any one had bothered to read his autobiography they would have read that he had been asked by Norah’s mother Sue Jones not to talk about them to the media. When did you know you had a half sister?
I have known that I had a half sister my whole life. It all comes down to the parents and what they feel is best for the child. Norah’s mother felt it was best to protect her by not telling her in the early years. My mother on the contrary has always been very open with me so I knew all along that I had a half sister. She visited my father at the age of 2 and 5 in India and later in England and was on the tour with us for about 3 weeks.
The press got the time line all wrong and one mag that seems to for some reason not like us, ran a story on Norah and me which implied that I was the spoilt brat and not very nice, carrying interviews with people I had never met and that Norah was the poor suffering one. It has been implied that she became well known, then developed a relationship with my father, but the fact is she and I have been close since I was 16 and she was 18 and her relationship with my father was fine.
It is so strange how Indian reporters write. They don’t record the interviews and then everything comes out all distorted, because they put it in their own language and you don’t recognize your own interview. There is nothing as exhausting as doing Indian press any where in the world.
A recent interview in the same magazine that wrote that article about your sister and you, was given by your mother’s ex husband Narender Kotiyan. It was pretty extensive and seems to be part of an ongoing series of interviews that he has been giving to the press even though your mother and he divorced almost 20 years ago, painting a picture of him being a cuckolded husband and a heartbroken father.
He has pictures of you and him poignantly displayed on the internet painting him to be a martyr whose daughter was snatched away by your parents. Even the caption of the recent story “The Man Anoushka Shankar Loved and Lost,’ sounded like you are pining for him, and being kept away against your will.
Your mother is one of the most honest women I know and she has never denied that she conceived you while she was still married to Naren, but that the marriage was rocky, a fact thankfully he too admits himself. He also claims that he didn’t know Ravi Shankar was your father.
Look at my face. I have looked like Bapi (Ravi Shankar) from the day I was born. My mother did tell him, but even if she didn’t utter a single word, how blind will you have to be to figure out whose child I was if you saw us together. Its totally idiotic to claim otherwise. My mother and he divorced when I was four, she married my father when I turned seven, so how did Bapi snatch me away from him? In fact even though Naren is biologically not my father and as such has no legal right on me, my mother would send me to visit him on weekends and even after they married, both my parents, especially my father were so magnanimous as to encourage me to spend time with him because he was someone who was a part of my early years. But each time I went there, if I let him, he would try to say things against my parents or emotionally blackmail me. Kids are not stupid you know. I could see what he was trying to do and by the time I was 10 or 11 it was my decision not to see him any more. He made me uncomfortable.
It’s really cheap to go around saying things like “oh she cuddled me.” Which kid wouldn’t cuddle a paternal or maternal adult back? For a period of time he would come for my concerts and I would go over to say hello but it would always be so melodramatic. He had this circle of friends who believed his sob stories and had decided it was their job to reveal “ the real truth” to me. I often get letters from all these people and respond to every one of them requesting them to tell him how I feel about all that he is doing. It irritates the crap out of me because it is not fair, or right, or any of their business. I would be at a concert in London signing autographs or whatever and one such friend would come over and say very emotionally “ He is here ..Naren is here..’ He would create this weird environment and expected me to tip toe around my parents to go see him. It was all so stupid. No one in my family has ever made him feel unwanted or unwelcome. He can, like any one else come and meet me in the open, but he doesn’t.
All the pictures you see on the internet are out of context and the right time line and removed from albums. One of the pictures is taken at the house of Bapi’s friend, it’s not even in his house. My mother actually bought that house, in spite of his claims to the contrary. She was so civil with him and dealt with everything with dignity. Why is he doing this, if he claims to love me?
I don’t bear him any ill will and I loved him as a kid. But I wish he would get help and counseling. It’s very unhealthy to hold on to grudges and talk about nothing else but the past and distort facts even though it has been 20 years.
Your family has been very close to George Harrison and the concert for George to mark his first death anniversary was beautiful. I also envy you the time you’ve been spending with Sting.
George Harrison was a beautiful man and the concert for George was cathartic for all of us. It was a lot of work as we ended up putting everything together in 4 days and worked at an incredible pace. I love playing with other people because you become a part of a greater musical endeavor. Bapi wrote a beautiful piece for the concert and it all somehow came together beautifully. With that tribute we rejoiced and also were finally able to let go.
I have been a great admirer of Sting and his music but I met his wife Trudy first at a concert and she was kind enough to get Sting to write me a letter on my birthday. A year later I met him at his concert and then mom and I stayed at his house again around my birthday and he played a happy birthday song for me. I was so shy around him, but now we keep in touch regularly and I have played on his cd Sacred Love.
How was it foraying into acting? You did the Pamela Rooks film, “Dance like a Man” about the daughter of two dancers continuing the dream of her parents through her own to dance. I know you have trained in Bharatanatyam.
Yes but it was so long ago. The linear notes were in my head and I remembered the symbolic patters and hand movements but I had to retrain physically to regain that comfort level because again I had not continued dance. The good thing was that I have faced the camera so often that there were no jitters there. As a result I could focus on the work at hand.
I enjoyed the experience, and felt that this was just the right film, and my role as a supporting actor just the right one to test the waters. It is not something I’m pursuing seriously. I have done a lot of readings but things have not worked out mainly because of my hectic tour schedule.
Your book “Bapi: The Love of My Life” was a true labor of love. Your father’s life is so well documented and yet you managed to give it a new look.
As you said his life is very well documented but I wanted to take those known facts and show people what he is today because of what he lived through in the past. I discovered many new details along the way that moved me or amused me and became part of the book. The writing part was easy- it was the layout that became time consuming. I wanted the pictures and the lay out to be a certain way. They would edit and I would re edit it right back, taping the pictures and the instructions very meticulously!
Your father had a dream to create a center for the performing arts and it looks like that dream is coming true finally with the establishing of the Ravi Shankar Center for Music and Arts in Delhi.
Yes its coming up well. The building is all done now, and really it was completely my mother’s idea to have a school for music and arts, gurukul style.. There are archives of my father’s work, his awards etc which are phenomenal and we still receive things from people that they have had belonging to bapi. We have two auditoriums there where we invite other artists to perform, have seminars, workshops. The concerts are doing very well and we have one concert every month. We plan to have painting exhibitions and also expand it to other art forms. The teaching is still at a minimal level because of the hectic touring schedule but we do want to encourage talented musicians and expand on the gurukul system in the future. Some of my father’s senior students will also teach there. I am one of the founding trustees, so I am very involved in it.
So has it been a blessing or a burden to be Ravi Shankar’s daughter?
Well it has been beneficial in the sense that I would have had to struggle a lot more to be where I am. I usually ignore people who are overly critical or expect too much. I do enjoy reading reviews but more from the musical aspect, as to what the critics have said, but as far as the multitude of people who are completely wrapped up in that one single thing that I am Ravi Shankar’s daughter, I really don’t care. Once in a while there is an excellent analysis, but finally, it is more important what my audience thinks and the positive flow of energy from them to me is an incredibly amazing experience. I knew earlier on that I would always be known as Ravi Shankar’s daughter no matter what, so I take it all in my stride. I come from a family of very strong-minded women, my mother, grand mother, and I think my maturity has helped me handle things. I have never come across serious discrimination, although once in a while I’ll meet people who’ll aim little jibes here and there “oh my God, if I had heard you with my eyes closed, I would have never known you were a woman.” A man would never get a comment like that.
You have achieved a lot in a short span of time – ace pianist, sitar prodigy, writer etc. So what are the achievements you are singularly proud of?
Honestly, probably those that have nothing to do with music. I have worked hard and obviously I must have some talent to have come this far, but I feel that whenever I get an award, or I do something related to music, it invariably has a connection with my father. So I can’t really take hundred percent credit for it. So it seems a lot more valuable for me when I get something which I Know is only just for me. Like the time I won the national Beta Conference representing the state of California, or when I won Homecoming Queen. That was an amazing experience because it had nothing to do with my music. Everyone had voted for me because they liked who I was as a person and not because I was Ravi Shankar’s daughter. They don’t care about that. And now of course my new cd. I have not yet done anything that my father has not liked, so that is a good thing!
What’s in the works now?
I love to play live so much, and I think I am a better musician live. I just feed off the energy of the people. The atmosphere in the recording studio is so dry.
I will be in India and Rise has just released there so I will be performing pieces from it then come back and complete my father’s festival of India tour. Then I will be headed for a world tour for Rise. Times have changed and I think it’s unhealthy to be obsessed with just one thing. I would go crazy.. I crave too many things, so I see myself doing a variety of things and as many interesting projects as possible.