Sitarist ravi shankar biography book

Indian Sun is a large book teeming with larger-than-life characters, not all of whom are called Ravi Shankar. Oliver Craske gives us a whole complex world, or, if you like, two complex worlds, Indian and Western, meeting, sometimes uneasily, through music. 

Shankar is at the center of the story, but it’s the other people in his life who help us understand him. He enjoyed numerous personal and professional relationships over the years with such distinguished musical people as Benjamin Britten, Philip Glass, George Harrison, Yehudi Menuhin, John Coltrane and many other musicians from the classical, jazz and popular worlds, as well as with many Indian musicians. Indeed, it’s likely that some people picking up this book will do so because they know of Shankar’s association with The Beatles, in particular George Harrison, perhaps remembering the sitar featuring in songs such as “Norwegian Wood” (actually written before the two met) or “Within you, without you.”

For a while, of course

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