Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar (born April 7 1920 in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India) is a Bengali-Indian musician best known for his virtuosity on the sitar. His ancestral home is the present day Kalia Upozila in Narail Distri

Ravi Shankar (born April 7 1920 in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India) is a Bengali-Indian musician best known for his virtuosity on the sitar. His ancestral home is the present day Kalia Upozila in Narail District, Jessore, Bangladesh. His mother's name was Hemanginee, and his elder brother Uday Shankar was a famous Indian classical dancer. He first married Annapurna, daughter of Baba Allauddin Khan, but the marriage did not last long. He later married his then student and admirer Sukanya Rajan. A disciple of Allauddin Khan (founder of the Maihar gharana of Indian classical music), Pandit Ravi Shankar is arguably the best-known Indian instrumentalist. He also danced and played sitar with his elder brother Uday's dance troupe.

Shankar is India's most esteemed musical ambassador and a singular phenomenon in the classical music worlds of East and West. As a performer, composer, teacher and writer, he has done more for Indian music than any other musician. He is well known for his pioneering work in bringing Indian music to the West. This however, he did only after long years of dedicated study under his guru Allaudin Khan and after making a name for himself in India. Shankar was well known outside India, performing in major events such as the Royal Festival and Edinburgh Festival when George Harrison, a member of The Beatles, began experimenting with the sitar in 1965. The two eventually met due to this common interest and became close friends, and that in turn expanded Shankar's fame as a pop star and as Harrison's mentor. This development greatly expanded his career. He was invited to play venues that were unusual for a classical musician, such as the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival in Monterey, California. He was also one of the artists who performed at the Woodstock Festival (1969) and The Concert for Bangladesh (1971).