By Ben Brumfield
His music transcended trends and cultural barriers. Pandit Ravi Shankar’s life, which traversed nearly a century, ended Tuesday.
The legendary sitar player, who taught Beatle George Harrison how to play the stringed instrument and brought Indian music to the West, passed away at age 92 in the early evening in San Diego, near his home, according to his wife, Sukanya, and daughter Anoushka Shankar, who were by his side.
In Bangladesh’s bloody war of separation from Pakistan in 1971, Shankar and Harrison launched what UNICEF calls the first massive fund-raising pop event, The Concert for Bangladesh, to generate donations for the flood of refugees pouring into India.
Later, from 1986 to 1992, Shankar put his politics into practice as a member of India’s upper house of parliament, the Rajya Sabha, or state assembly, serving with India’s current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
“It was difficult, often, to judge what was more remarkable — the man or his music,” Singh said of Shankar on Wednesday. He praised him as one of India’s “most effective cultural ambassadors.”
