Pandit Ravi Shankar to receive posthumous Grammy award

Do you know, India is the most rewarded country? We are been rewarded by several things, one of the biggest example is our most renowned sitar player Pandit Ravi Shankar. He was a true ambassador for international music. Unluckily we have lost him as he passed away on Tuesday, 11/12/12 in southern California at the age of 92, after fading to improve from surgery at a hospital in La Jolla, near San Diego previous week. He was sitar maestro who led his whole life as a musician. He acquired lifetime achievement award and composed filmic soundtracks - including for Gandhi. His personal life blossomed with elaborate colour, including partners, prizes, children and break-ups. He was a gentleman who was undoubtedly India’s cultural representative to the West; who trained George Harrison the art of playing the Sitar. As a performer, musician, teacher and writer, he is considered as a pioneer in bringing Indian music to the West. With a concert career that spanned more than 80 years, he has influenced a variety of musicians, the John Coltrane, Philip Glass, Beatles, and his daughters, Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar".

Sound and Silence are the two important factors in composing Music, it is an art form. Pitch, Rhythm and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture are the common elements of Tune. According to Social context and culture, significance, creation, performance and even the definition of music varies. Melody can be categorized as a fine art, a performing art and auditory art. It has a power of establishing the personality and should therefore be familiar into the education of the young. It is reflected as an ethical law. It gives soul to the world, arms to the mind, and life to everything. Life would be an error without music.Along with the music, song and dance also act as a revitaliser. It is a source of gaining relaxation and peace of mind. It has been usually recognised that man has a great impact of music on his emotional life and if the music is composed by such a legend (Pandit Ravi Shankar) it is something amazing. More than any other musician or performer, he not only associated the music of the east to the west, but raised it beyond performance and gratitude into a social and political cause. He was a composer of Classical music.

Shankar won his first Grammy for 1967’s West Meets East, association with Yehudi Menuhin, which was chosen as a Best Chamber Music Performance. In March 1973, Shankar was among the victors for Album of the Year for George Harrison & Groups 'The Concert for Bangladesh. He shared the award with Harrison, Klaus Voormann, Bob Dylan, Billy Preston, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and Leon Russell. He achieved his most recent Grammy award for 2001's Full Circle - Carnegie Hall 2000, which was chosen as a Best World Music Album. The sitar pioneer trained his close friend George Harrison, the late Beatle, to play the instrument and work together with him on several projects, including the ground-breaking Concert for Bangladesh in the year 1971. Grammy awards honours outstanding successes in, respectively, television, films, and music or other audio recording, and theatre. He is titled as “The Godfather of World Music” by his student/colleague Harison. Legendary sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar would obtain the lifetime achievement posthumous Grammy award on February 10 at the 55th Grammy Awards ceremony programmed in Los Angeles. As we have lost such a legendary king, he will be always in our heart.