Ravi Shankar Passes Away At 92

Ravi Shankar, arguably the most influential eastern musician of the modern day, has passed away in San Diego at the age of 92. The Ravi Shankar Foundation confirmed the news today.

He began his performing career in his native India back in 1939 and began working as a composer in the mid-1940s after completing his studies with Allauddin Khan, lead musician for the Maihar court. After composing a wide variety of different styles of music, Shankar began attracting international acclaim and began spending a lot of time in the United States.

Shankar made the majority of his records through the 1950s and '60s for Richard Bock's World Pacific Records and it was those recordings that turned legendary West Coast rock band The Byrds onto Shankar's music. They began to incoporate it into their own songs, specifcally songs such as Eight Miles High and Why, and, importantly, introduced Shankar to their friend George Harrison of The Beatles.

In 1966 Harrison went to India to study with Shakar for six weeks, following this Shankar's popularity skyrocketed and soon he was playing events such as the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock - a show he did not particularly enjoy, reportedly. In fact he later admitted he wasn't particularly impressed by the hippie movement.

“I was extremely unhappy about the superficiality of it all, especially the wrong information that Dr Timothy Leary and others were propagating — that everyone in India takes drugs. It was a hodgepodge of Kama Sutra, Tantra, yoga, hash and LSD, while the true spiritual quality of our music was almost completely lost,” Shankar toldThe Guardian's John O'Mahony in 2008.

Shankar continued to perform very late into his life and leaves behind not only a greta musical legacy, but a number of children who have become successful musicians in their own right, including pop-jazz vocalist Norah Jones and virtuosic sitar player Anoushka Shankar. Both Ravi and Anoushka Shankar are nominated for Best World Music Recording at the 2013 Grammy Awards, to be held in Los Angeles in February.

Ravi Shankar passed away at San Diego's Scripps Mercy Hospital at around 4,30pm local time on Tuesday 11 December, 2012, following post-surgical complications.