India's Master Musician

by Stewart MasonOne of Ravi Shankar's first Western recordings -- made at London's Abbey Road Studios in 1963 (a full two years before George Harrison was introduced to Shankar's music) and originally released in the U.S. on the tiny jazz-oriented indie World Pacific -- India's Master Musician makes some slight concessions toward the untutored Western audience. The liner notes are almost teacherly in their dry explication of Indian musical forms, and the five brief pieces (the longest, "Raga Charu Keshi," clocks in at a mere 13 and a half minutes, which by the expansive standards of Indian classical music is downright Ramones-like in its brevity) do little more than introduce a theme, suggest some variations, and conclude. Yet for all that, there is no attempt here to dumb down this difficult but rewarding music for Western ears, and the occasional resemblances to Western musical forms, like the almost jazz-like call-and-response section between Shankar and his sidemen, tabla player Kanai Dutt and tamboura player Nodu C. Mullick, are entirely coincidental. This is an excellent introduction not only to Ravi Shankar, but to Indian classical music in general.