5FEATURE

theaustralian.com.au/review March 3-4, 2018V1 - AUSE01Z01AR

engage in improvisatory passages of her own.She is one of the few women who play the

sitar professionally. But she has never consid-ered herself a pioneer. “I don’t know what thealternate experience would be, had he not beenmy father,” says Shankar, who grew up listeningto Britpop and techno in between reading theMahabharata and learning Indian songs anddances with her mother. “Maybe it meantpeople wouldn’t f..k with me, I don’t know. Myparents were very pro-women and independ-ence. They wanted me to have my own career.

“It’s not as if playing the sitar is banned forwomen in India. You see a lot of girls learningsitar at school, but then dropping off when theyget to professional touring age and becomingwives and mothers instead. There’s simply noinfrastructure there for so many things.”

Shankar was raised in northwest London byher mother, Sukanya, a South Indian singerwho had met Ravi Shankar while she was mar-ried and he was going through an acrimoniousdivorce, and in another relationship. Sukanyawould be a single parent, and the baby, Anoush-ka, a precious secret. (“At first Ravi was notready to accept her,” Sukanya Shankar toldBritain’s The Telegraph newspaper in 2001. “Icouldn’t take her anywhere because they lookso alike.”) Ravi met Anoushka when she wasthree months old, then twice-yearly, clandes-tinely, until her parents wed in 1989. Theymoved to the beach city of Encinitas in Califor-nia three years later, when Anoushka was 11.

While living in London and California, shespent winters attending English-syllabusschools in India, where her decision to take upthe sitar came with the pressure of expectation;Ravi Shankar was revered across the subconti-

IN SO MANY WAYS, I AM BLESSED

ANOUSHKA SHANKAR

nent, even if many classical music purists dis-puted his penchant for fusion. It was a weightshe consciously tried to ignore.

“I couldn’t avoid the path I took,” she hassaid. Her mother had played Ravi’s ragas to herin the womb. Her earliest musical memoriesinvolve her father practising the sitar at home.She would proved an eager, nimble-fingeredstudent, even if she still finds the cross-leggedsitting position, along with the extra-thinstrings and the long wooden neck pressingagainst her shoulder, physically taxing.

Having lost his eldest child, Shubbendra,who died aged 50 in 1992, Ravi appears to havefocused much of his attention on his belovedyoungest, whom he fathered at 60. “My fathertold me I didn’t have to learn if I didn’t want tobut there would be no cutting corners,” she says.“I was lucky I got him when he wasn’t doing allthat intensive touring in the 1960s and 70s.”

Norah Jones, two years Anoushka’s senior,was born towards the end of Ravi’s brief rela-tionship with Sue Jones, a New York dancerand promoter, and grew up in Grapevine, Texas.When, aged 18, she telephoned out of the blueand introduced herself with, “This is Norah,Ravi’s daughter”, it was Anoushka whoanswered. “I knew I had a sister somewhere butI nearly fainted,” she once said.

The adolescent Anoushka blossomed in Cal-ifornia, getting top grades, acting in plays,enjoying being one of few Indian students at herhigh school. (“It was a big part of me becomingmore individualistic.”) She joined a feministsociety and wrote pieces for the student news-paper, her social conscience piqued by conver-sations overheard at her parents’ dinner parties,where artists, authors and scientists broke breadwith world-class musicians including YehudiMenuhin and her “Uncle George” Harrison.

It was Harrison who, with Ravi Shankar,organised the Concert for Bangladesh benefit inMadison Square Garden in New York City in1971, with both men appearing in a line-up thatincluded Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton, andraised awareness as well as money for war vic-tims turned refugees. The popular eventspawned a documentary, a bestselling livealbum and a longstanding urban myth. Thatstory about the crowd watching Ravi tune hissitar, then cheering wildly, thinking that was it,and wandering off? It never happened.

“Ah the tuning question!” Anoushka clapsher hands. “If you listen to the live recording,you will hear a smattering of applause before hemakes a little comment: ‘If you like the tuning,then you will like the show.’ ”

There is a profound beauty to sitar music.Some morning ragas might be soundtracks tothe dawning of the earth; there are eveningragas that soothe and nourish. One of the mostexpressive instruments anywhere, the sitar canreconnect us to our selves. “It’s definitely aninstrument that evokes feelings of peace, spirit-uality, connectivity and love,” says Shankar,who by 20 had released three classical record-ings and had her first (world music) Grammynomination. She spoke of wanting to writefilm scores some day, just as her father didin the 50s for legendary Indian directorSatyajit Ray.

Her breakthrough album, 2005’sRise, brought her another nomi-nation, as did 2011’s Traveller, awork exploring links betweenIndian classical music andSpanish flamenco, and 2013’sTraces of You, which featuresvocals by Norah Jones —and was her first album fol-lowing her father’s death(a subsequent album ofclassical ragas,Home, was releasedin 2015). “Traces of

you linger like a teardrop, fresh upon the air,”sings Jones, crystalline and dreamy over Shank-ar’s plangent sitar. The video for the album’stitle track depicts the sisters in a soft light fil-tered through refracted glass, and was directedby Wright — whose visual sense influencedLand of Gold.

“He constantly turned my attention back towhere the story was,” Shankar says. “So when Iwas recording the fast sitar lines on Last ChanceI was literally imagining someone running andtrying to feel like I was running. To work with aproducer who cared about the emotionalcontent of the music was really huge.”

Her husband of seven years is in the US, pro-moting The Darkest Hour. “He turned into a six-year-old, saying: ‘Please, please can I co-produce?’,” she says. “We sat down and had ahusband-and-wife chat where I said: ‘I know asa film director you’re used to having the finalsay but can we be clear on whose word isfinal?’ ” She flashes a grin. “He said: ‘OK, but wenever disagree on anything.’ Sure enough, therewas a point six months in where I was like:‘Remember that chat?’ ”

So far, so (relatively) regular. But in theweeks after our interview Shankar posts a seriesof cryptic tweets: “How do people stay in love?With eyes illuminated enough to close, and aheart content to rest.’’ On December 30 shetweeted a photo of herself in sun-dappledJamaica, Mohan on her hip, with the words:“Ending the year full of gratitude for the gifts ofmotherhood, creativity and connection withother souls. Even in times of pain I am gratefulto be so blessed.” Early January saw her withJones in snow-covered Brooklyn: “So happy tobe staying with big sis for a few days.”

On January 12 came the official announce-ment confirming that Shankar and Wright hadended their marriage. Amid the ensuing fuss,the showbiz pieces speculating on which actressWright was dating, Shankar got on with her life:there were interviews around her (first) filmscore to Franz Osten’s restored 1927 silent filmShiraz, which tells the story behind the TajMahal, and which Shankar performed live inLondon and five Indian cities.

Then on February 1 another tweet, with aportrait of a pensive Shankar holding the neckof her sitar: “Like a rock, like a mountain, likethe certainty that the next wave will crash uponthe shore, it’s always been there,” she declared.“When I needed to scream, to cry, or to revel inmy joy, it’s been my voice, always there. Mybaby, my axe, my lover, my heart.” Eat my dust,read the subtext.

Shankar is surrounded by women who lifther up: M.I.A, the British rapper, singer andactivist of Sri Lankan Tamil origin whom shemet on a play date with their kids, and bondedwith over their respective music projects in re-sponse to the refugee crisis. German-Turkishtroubadour Alev Lenz, who sings on the titletrack of Land of Gold and lives around the cor-ner; her gang of non-starry girlfriends, some ofwhom I met when I bumped into Shankar a fewdays later at an art exhibition at the Barbican.

Fiercely pro-women, Shankar has been vocalin her support of campaigns including OneBillion Rising, the movement that evolved in re-sponse to the horrific 2011 gang rape of studentJyoti Singh Pandey on a Delhi bus and revealedthe scale of sexual violence against women inIndia. She has taken part in panel discussionsand hosted radio shows about gender equality;she views the current #MeToo movement as ahugely positive force.

“It’s like a collective global dam of feminineexperience has burst,” she says. “I hope it meansthat the boundary has moved. Often withchange there’s a push-and-pull process that istwo steps forward, one step back, and I think

that’s how progress goes.“After One Billion Rising, suddenly issues

of sexual violence and women’s experiencewere being discussed on a global scale. So

this feels like a second spike of some-thing I never thought would happentwice in my lifetime. It’s as if every

woman is part of this feeling wherethey want to have their own story vali-dated and told. The fact that there’sthis groundswell of people reinforcingthat you can actually say, ‘No, not anymore’, is incredible.”

Believing that being an artist is anextension of being human, Shankar iscompelled to use her platform to speakout, to make a difference, to sustain herfather’s vision that music can promotepeace and contribute to the world.“Though my father is no longer here, Istill get to interact with him through the

music. I’m blessed in that way; not manypeople are so fortunate. In so many ways, I

am blessed.”

Anoushka Shankar plays at WOMADelaideon Friday, in Sydney on March 11 and inMelbourne on March 13.

TONY

LEW

IS