Everything I know about the sitar I learned from Anoushka's father

"Raga's are precise melody forms"

So begins the CD An Introduction to Indian Music, by Ravi Shankar. This introduction didn't make me an expert on sitar form or style but it did help me understand the performance by Ravi's daughter, sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar,during her recent appearance at the Chan Centre during Festival Vancouver.

Presumably Anoushka also learned much from her father and also apparently has added her own flavours and tastes to this classic Indian instrument and melody form.

She appeared on stage with a seven other musicians playing a combination of Indian and Western instruments, including a G5 Mac Powerbook, piano, an Indian wind instrument, tablas and voice.

It's hard to describe the extent to which she blends European influences into the Indian form since I'm really just a chump with a thing for Indian music but the effect was a wonderful mixture of melodic runs up and down the sitar with its bended notes and resonating symapathetic strings, the tap-tunk of the tablas drum, the beauty of a chanting human voice and the soundscape from the G5.

It was a very relaxed and easy-going performance with Shankar clearly happy being on stage and apparently surrounded by friends (she had a mimed conversation with someone in the wings during a lull in the music, "Hello. Great to see you! No, come around the side and sit in the front. No, no, there are people you know there", etc)

Now, after a night of Anoushka, I feel a little old-skool for still listening to her father's CDs and LP vinyl.

If you get a chance to see Anoushka, take it.

xoxo

M