RAVI SHANKAR, the Indian sitarist and composer whose collaborations with Western
classical musicians as well as the Beatles and other rock stars helped
foster a worldwide appreciation of India’s traditional music, died on
Tuesday in San Diego. He was 92.
Mr. Shankar died in a hospital near his home, his family said in a
statement, adding that he had suffered from upper respiratory and heart
ailments in the last year and underwent heart-valve replacement surgery
last Thursday.
Mr. Shankar, a soft-spoken, eloquent man whose virtuosity transcended
musical languages, was trained in both Eastern and Western musical
traditions. Although Western audiences were often mystified by the odd
sounds and shapes of the instruments when he began touring in Europe and
the United States in the early 1950s, Mr. Shankar and his ensemble
gradually built a large following for Indian music.
Mr. Shankar collaborated with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the
flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, and was a mentor to the jazz saxophonist and
composer John Coltrane. But Western interest in his instrument, the
sitar, exploded in 1965 when George Harrison of the Beatles encountered
one on the set of “Help!,” the Beatles’ second film.
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