shankar primary

• 2007 – date of album’s release. Shankar's fifth album. Critically admired but only a moderate commercial success.
• Highly collaborative project with Shankar’s virtuoso sitar playing as the unifying feature. Other artists include Sting, Norah Jones (her half-sister), Ravi Shankar (her father), Karsh Kale, Salim Merchant & Sunidhi Chauhan.
• Fusion is the particular interest of the exam: Asian/Western
• Asian – instruments such as sitar(!), tabla, manjira, sarangi; improvisatory feel to melodic lines; microtonal inflections aplenty (the journey between the notes as important as the pitches themselves); no use of the rag (Asian scale) in its purest sense but modally inflected melodies suggest a less Western ‘classical’ feel; plenty of nuanced rhythmical subdivision and subtle syncopation in melodic lines; avoidance of cadential narrative; use of introductory free-time alap.
• Western – instruments such as drum kit, conventional string orchestra; bass guitar, piano, synthesised sounds; less subtle rhythmic patterns – usually in a symmetrical four beat; use of elaborate extended chords although often from a restricted palette; traditional song structures; use of recording techniques such as reverb.
• Burn: the lyric concerns the mysteries of love as reflected in the moon, the sun and the stars… highly romanticised and non-specific ‘…dance with me…’; lyric is by Salim Merchant
• Breathing Under Water: essentially instrumental but with wordless vocal elements; it serves as an introduction to the next track Sea Dreamer.
• Easy: the lyric tells us that as we age we realise that love is not everything: ‘it’s only love and feeling is easy’; lyric is by Norah Jones
• Other significant tracks from the album are: Slither, Sea Dreamer, Oceanic: Part 1 & Part 2
• Bollywood (Bombay/Hollywood) is the ultimate showcase for this type of fusion music.
• Ravi Shankar died in 2012 – only five years after recording on breathing underwater
• Ravi Shankar (the world’s greatest ever sitar virtuoso) was the first international Asian figure who embraced cross-cultural fusion; apart from his famous collaboration with George

  Harrison and The Beatles he worked with Yehudi Menuhin (classical violinist), André Previn (composer) and Philip Glass (minimalist composer)