Obituaries

World Music Icon Ravi Shankar Dead at 92

Shankar spent the final years of his life in Southern California, in the surf town of Encinitas near San Diego.

 

Revered sitar player Ravi Shankar is dead at 92 after undergoing heart valve replacement surgery Thursday.

Shankar is known for his work with the Beatles and at the Woodstock Music Festival, which helped introduce American audiences to traditional Indian music.

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George Harrison, who Shankar taught to play the sitar, is said also to have dubbed him the "father of world music."

Harrison's early sitar-playing is featured in the Beatles' 1966 song "Norweigian Wood."

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Shankar will also be remembered as pioneering the idea of the "benefit concert," when he helped produce the 1971 "Concert for Bangladesh" with Harrison.

Shankar lived the final years of his life in the Southern California surf town of Encinitas.

Contemporary audiences also know him as the estranged father of singer Norah Jones.

Tuesday night the Los Angeles Philharmonic and downtown's Grand Performances Twitter feeds both noted Shankar's death.


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