Monday, Oct. 04, 2004

Anoushka Shankar

By Aryn Baker

The notes played on the silver-fretted sitar are vintage Ravi Shankar, but the 23-year-old daughter of India's most famous musical export is doing what her father never would have thought necessary—bringing Indian classical music back home. Anoushka Shankar is equally comfortable in a silk sari as she is in hip-hugging jeans, and since the age of 13 she has made her sitar an instrument not just of a silky melody but of a cultural revival. Besieged by the pop pap of Bollywood, traditional Indian music has found it hard to win a wider audience beyond old-school aficionados. Shankar, who was taught the fundamentals of the sitar by her father, who's now 84, is changing that by injecting freshness and energy into a somewhat stuffy art form, and broadening its appeal for a younger generation. Says Amjad Ali Khan, a revered Indian musician and contemporary of her father: "Anoushka is the future of Indian classical music."

Shankar's exotic beauty, prodigious talent and impeccable pedigree have made her a concert-hall favorite in the West. A collaboration with Sting on his Sacred Love album was critically acclaimed, and the recording of her sold-out performance at New York City's Carnegie Hall was nominated for a Grammy in 2003 (the year her half-sister, American balladeer Norah Jones, walked away with five awards, including Album of the Year). Today, Shankar is flirting with Bollywood—she debuted in last week's indie release Dance Like a Man—but that's likely to be just a fleeting relationship. Her real love is classical music, and she wants to show her generation that Indian tradition can be just as hip as Bollywood pop. "I've been trying to tap into a younger culture," she told a U.S. newspaper. "My father did that for many decades, but people closer to my own age don't necessarily know as much about music as his young fans did." When it comes to their passion for keeping Indian classical music alive, the Shankars hit the same note.