Anoushka Shankar

The Prophetess of the Sitar: Anoushka Shankar
by Alceste Ayroldi

It is hard to begin speaking about Anoushka Shankar without falling into the cliché: she is the daughter of a legend. And yet it must be said, because if Ravi Shankar brought the sound of the sitar to the world (thanks to George Harrison and Woodstock) and gave new musical life to the hippie movement of the Seventies, he also inscribed music and this instrument indelibly into the soul of his beloved daughter.

That said, the sitar has now entered the Western cultural sphere, thanks to globalization (praiseworthy in this case), and can now be heard in chill-out, rock, pop, and even techno tracks; not to mention that Wherever I May Roam by Metallica opens with a striking sitar intro.

The sitar is a significant instrument in Indian classical music, and, as historians suggest, it derives from the Iranian setar and shows kinship with the zither and the lyre. It has eighteen strings in total (seven on top and eleven below), making it difficult to learn and master: a philosophical mindset is required to approach it—this instrument is not for everyone. It is played using a plectrum (called a mizrab) worn on the index finger of the right hand. The mizrab is generally made of metal and allows for precise plucking of the strings. We need not go into further technical detail here, but this introduction serves to highlight the skill and sensitivity of Anoushka Shankar. It is worth noting from the outset that she is the stepsister (a term far less harsh in English than in Italian) of Norah Jones (Ravi had a relationship with singer Sue Jones). The two sisters collaborated on the album Traces of You (2013), with Norah Jones singing on three exquisite tracks.

Anoushka, born in London, is a vital part of the city's music scene—undoubtedly one of the most vibrant in terms of innovation. Despite her young age, she has already published an autobiography: Bapi: The Love of My Life, dedicated to her father, with whom she shared a deep bond. She also manages the Ravi Shankar Centre in Chanakyapuri, India, handling every aspect of its operations.

The British musician has mastered the intricacies of the sitar and seamlessly blends the classical language of Indian music with Western influences from jazz, soul, and pop. Perhaps for this reason, among others, she has garnered six Grammy Award nominations and became the youngest and first woman ever to receive a distinguished award from the British House of Commons. She has also been named an Asian Hero by Time magazine, and won both an Eastern Eye Award for Music and a Songlines Best Artist Award.

She made her classical sitar debut at age thirteen. By twenty, she had already recorded three classical albums for EMI/Angel and received her first Grammy nomination, becoming both the first Indian woman and the youngest nominee ever in the World Music category. Her solo debut album, Anoushka, was released in 1998 when she was still a minor, and featured five tracks of remarkable depth and maturity.

There is hardly a prestigious concert hall where she has not performed: the Barbican Centre, Sydney Opera House, Vienna Konzerthaus, Salle Pleyel, Royal Festival Hall, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Palais des Beaux-Arts, the KKL in Lucerne, Millennium Park in Chicago, San Francisco Opera House, and Carnegie Hall—the latter performance immortalized in a live album from 2001.

She has also performed her father's four sitar concertos with major orchestras around the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of illustrious conductors such as Zubin Mehta.

A gifted composer as well, Shankar has taken part in intercultural collaborations with artists such as Sting, M.I.A., Herbie Hancock, Pepe Habichuela, Karsh Kale, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Joshua Bell. Her album Rise (2005, Angel Records-EMI) reveals her talent for composition and her openness to experimentation. In 2011, she signed with Deutsche Grammophon, marking a creatively fertile period that produced several exploratory albums: Traveller (produced by Javier Limón), exploring the link between Indian classical music and Spanish flamenco; the aforementioned Traces of You(produced by Nitin Sawhney and featuring Norah Jones); and Home, a return to classical Indian music, raga, and her father's teachings.

Her 2016 album Land of Gold was a response to the humanitarian crisis of displaced people fleeing conflict and poverty. It was later remixed by top producers such as Mogwai, Karsh Kale, and Matt Robertson. In 2019, she released Reflections, a compilation album that traces the milestones of her 20-year recording career.

In 2020 came Love Letters, which includes the track Opening, Flowering, Drinking featuring Norah Jones, and collaborations with German composer Alev Lenz and American composer-producer and synthesizer expert Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.

In addition to being a virtuoso sitarist, Shankar is also a remarkable composer. Her work was celebrated with a dedicated Zeitinsel at the Konzerthaus Dortmund, where she was given carte blanche to present four full programs that explored different facets of her artistic life.

Her most recent full-length album, released in 2022, is Between Us (Leiter), created in collaboration with Manu Delago, the Metropole Orkest, and conductor Jules Buckley. But she did not stop there: from 2022 to the present, she has crafted a profound and thrilling trilogy—a kind of travel diary—divided into three chapters: Chapter I: Forever, For Now (2023), Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dawn (2024, which also earned a Grammy nomination), and the newly released Chapter III: We Return To Light, all published by Leiter.

The cradle of this trilogy was a café in Goa, where she jotted in her diary: “Three chapters, three geographies.” The cathartic thread uniting them: the relationship between light and darkness.

Anoushka Shankar is one of those rare artists who go beyond appearances. Her artistry moves on a plane that today could be called otherworldly. Her compositional beauty, constant reinvention (while staying rooted in tradition), and unassailable technique have few equals. Chapter III brings the sounds of Indian raga back into play, blended with modern melodies and tonalities that collide with looped rhythms, ambient textures, and hypnotic trance grooves. In this purely instrumental set, Shankar and her collaborators, Sarathy Korwar and Alam Khan, act as keen-eyed musical magpies, selecting from a rainbow of influences and stitching them into their intricate sonic tapestry.