Musical pioneer Ravi Shankar dies at age 92
Ravi Shankar introduced Indian classical music to the world, taught George Harrison to play sitar and was a key figure at Woodstock festival
Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, who influenced musicians ranging from The Beatles to violinist Yehudi Menuhin, has died aged 92 in the United States after surgery, his family said yesterday.
Shankar, the father of American singer-songwriter Norah Jones and fellow sitar star Anoushka Shankar, died on Tuesday in hospital in San Diego, California, where he had undergone an operation to replace a heart valve.
Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh hailed Shankar, who popularised Indian classical music around the world, as "a national treasure and global ambassador of India's cultural heritage".
"An era has passed away … The nation joins me to pay tributes to his unsurpassable genius, his art and his humility," he said.
Shankar, who had houses in California and India, was born into a high-caste Bengali Brahmin family in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi in northern India on April 7, 1920.
He began his career at a young age, touring Europe with his brother Uday's dance troupe but returned to India in the late 1930s to study the sitar under the renowned musician Allauddin Khan. Shankar first married Khan's daughter, Annapurna Devi, in 1941 and they had a son, Shubendhra.