ANOUSHKA SHANKAR - VOICE OF THE MOON

VOICE OF THE MOON

ANOUSHKA SHANKAR

Songwriter: Anoushka shankar

LIVE COUTANCES FRANCE 2014

Country: Indian/england

Album: rise

Label: angel records

Genre: Indian music

Year: 2005

 

         Anoushka Shankar (born 9 June 1981) is a British Bengali sitar player and composer. She is the daughter of Pandit Ravi Shankar and Sukanya Rajan, and the half-sister of Norah Jones.

             Shankar was born in London and her childhood was divided between London and Delhi. She is the daughter of Sukanya Shankar and Bengali-Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, who was 61 when she was born. Through her father, she is also the half-sister of American singer Norah Jones (born Geetali Norah Shankar), and Shubhendra "Shubho" Shankar, who died in 1992.

          As a teenager, Shankar lived in Encinitas, California, and attended San Dieguito High School Academy. A 1999 honors graduate and Homecoming Queen, Anoushka decided to pursue a career in music rather than attend college.

          On 29 November 2002, Shankar was the featured performer of the "Indian" half of the Concert for George, a posthumous tribute to the life and music of George Harrison, held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. She opened the show by playing a solo sitar instrumental titled "Your Eyes". Also on the sitar, she performed George Harrison's "The Inner Light" with Jeff Lynne. Lastly, she conducted a new composition, Arpan, written by her father. The composition featured Eric Clapton playing acoustic guitar, and a full orchestra of Indian and Western musicians. The concert was modelled after Ravi Shankar's benefit concert with Harrison, the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.

             Shankar was invited by Richard Gere and Philip Glass to perform in a concert at Avery Fisher Hall in 2003 in aid of the Healing the Divide: A Concert for Peace and Reconciliation. Shankar and Jethro Tull postponed a concert scheduled for 29 November 2008 in Mumbai after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. They reorganised the performance as A Billion Hands Concert, a benefit performance for victims of the attacks, and held it on 5 December 2008. Shankar commented on this decision stating that: "As a musician, this is how I speak, how I express the anger within me [...] our entire tour has been changed by these events and even though the structure of the concert may remain the same, emotionally perhaps we are saying a lot more."

          Rise is an album by Anoushka Shankar released on 27 September 2005. The album was chosen as one of Amazon.com's Top 100 Editor's Picks of 2005 (#82). On previous recordings, Anoushka Shankar had followed in the footsteps of her father, Ravi Shankar, by performing relatively traditional, raga-based music. Rise, by contrast, incorporated jazz, pop, and pan-ethnic world music textures in an unpredictable melange. At the center of it all are Shankar's sitar expertise and traditional Indian roots.