My father was a religion professor when I was growing up.
And I figured out early that his musical tastes differed from the fathers of my friends. In the central Arkansas town where I was raised, the fathers of most of my friends seemed to like country music. There were a few who liked the popular music of the day, but most of them were country boys who listened to country music on AM radio stations.
But Dad always liked ethnic music, which made his musical tastes unique among the grown men in my life. As a child, I always more or less assumed that was kind of an occupational hazard. My father taught classes about all religions, and he had recordings of music from places like Israel and Egypt, music I tended to associate with programs I had seen about the Holy Land.
There probably wasn't anything particularly religious about those recordings, just an association I made as a child. And I'm sure there was no Hindu significance to any of the music recorded by Ravi Shankar that my father had in his collection.
Shankar is 90 today. And, even though he is generally considered a sitar player, many folks fail to give him due credit for his influence on mainstream popular music.
I don't know how Dad found out about Ravi Shankar. I've never asked him. Dad likes classical music, too, and he may have learned about Shankar through violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who Dad admired. Menuhin had enjoyed quite a bit of success long before he collaborating with Shankar.
Popular music fans became familliar with Shankar through the Byrds and George Harrison of the Beatles. Harrison used the sitar on his song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" and "Within You Without You." Later, Shankar appeared at the legendary Woodstock festival and joined Harrison in the famous benefit show, "The Concert for Bangladesh." Shankar got a Grammy for his contribution.
A decade later, Shankar was nominated for an Academy Award for his music in the film "Gandhi."
If today's audiences are familiar with Shankar's name, it is probably because he is known to young listeners as the father of singer–songwriter Norah Jones
I actually got to see Shankar once. And I saw him with Dad. When my brother and I were young, my father went on sabbatical in Nashville, Tenn., and the family went with him. We had the opportunity to see Shankar perform at Vanderbilt University while we were there.
I guess I was too young to appreciate the differences between the compositions he played. But that is an evening I will always remember with fondness.
