The Global Pandit's Lessons

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George Harrison (left) and Ravi Shankar (right) were greeted
at the White House by President Gerald Ford on Dec. 13, 1974.

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This hasn't been a good time for music legends.

Last week, jazz great Dave Brubeck died, and yesterday it was sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.

Both men were in their early 90s so their deaths were not unanticipated. Yet their passing leaves a tremendous void in music.

I saw Shankar perform once.

It was nearly 40 years ago. My father, a college professor, was on sabbatical in Nashville, and Ravi Shankar came to the Vanderbilt campus and performed there with his entourage one evening.

My father, a fan of Shankar's music, took the whole family to see him. I was too young at the time to appreciate a whole evening's worth of the sitar player's music, but I knew who he was. He was an inspiration to George Harrison before and after the Beatles broke up, and he rubbed elbows with violinist Yehudi Menuhin, a classical musician my father admired.

He influenced other genres, too, but his roots were in traditional Indian music. His Western audiences were seldom well versed in it — I remember giggling when I watched "Concert for Bangladesh" and the audience, not knowing what it had just heard, applauded when Shankar and his colleagues finished warming up.

"Thank you," Shankar said. "If you liked the tuning so much, I hope you'll enjoy the playing more."

In such a gentle, good–humored way, he taught his audiences about the music of his native land.

In India, he was called Pandit, which means teacher — or, more accurately, scholar — but I never felt he was seen as a teacher in this country. At least, not as a traditional teacher. His manner was too informal, too relaxed. Too inclusive.

He wanted all his listeners to understand the deeper meanings behind Indian music, and he was frustrated in the 1960s and 1970s when, following his introduction to American audiences through Harrison and the Beatles, he found his concerts being attended largely by drug–using counterculture types.

Still, the world was his classroom. His lessons may have been understated, but they had staying power. Teaching others about Indian music was something he long wanted to do.

"The idea of helping Western listeners appreciate the intricacies of Indian music occurred to him during his years as a dancer," writes Allan Kozinn in the New York Times.

He taught Western listeners all the time, whether it was through his concerts or his recordings — including his score for "Gandhi" — or his actual work with students.

Sadly, many modern listeners may only know Shankar as the father of Norah Jones, also a musician who has done her father one better by winning a Grammy — nine of 'em, in fact.

I'd like to think much of her success was due to the education she received at the University of North Texas — where I got my master's degree — but I know most of it is in the genes.

That may not be such a bad legacy, though. Jones continues to attract listeners, and, in turn, they learn who her father was. That knowledge may inspire some to learn more about his life.

And the pandit's lessons continue.

Ten Years Without George Harrison

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Nearly a year ago, a friend of mine asked me to write something about George Harrison.

I knew we were coming up on the 10th anniversary of Harrison's death so I promised her that I would. And this is the fulfillment of that promise.

But I've really been fulfilling the promise incrementally over the year.

Since she made that request, I have written other pieces that mentioned Harrison — specifically, in connection with "Taxman" and when I wrote about his musical tribute to former Beatles bandmate John Lennon and when I wrote of the anniversaries of the benefit concerts for Bangladesh and the release of the Beatles album "Revolver."

All of that has reminded me how much modern music owes the "quiet Beatle." I haven't seen Martin Scorsese's HBO documentary about Harrison, but I have heard that it is an important step in giving him the recognition he never really seemed to get during his life.

If that is so, then I applaud it.

Because I have learned things about Harrison as I have worked on this article since making my promise — perhaps I re–learned some of them.

There were lots of things about Harrison that I already knew or thought I knew.

I knew Harrison was a seeker. He was easily the most spiritual of the four Beatles. And that has its place, I suppose. It may be the single quality that people mention most about Harrison.

There are worse ways to be remembered.

But I always felt there was more to him than that. Harrison possessed a sensitivity that Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr did not — at least not to the extent that Harrison did.

That sensitivity could be seen in the passion he had for humanitarian causes. That wasn't something he did because it was fashionable. He was involved in humanitarian issues all along, but he was more visible after the Beatles split up.

His role with the Beatles was always limited. He always existed in the overwhelming shadow of the Lennon–McCartney partnership, but that role, thankfully, expanded in the later years, and the world was allowed to see more of his talent in songs like "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Here Comes the Sun," "Something" and "Within You Without You."

Harrison's most significant contributions were musical, but that doesn't mean his musical talent and his spirituality were kept separate from each other; far from it. The two often converged — as when Harrison's acceptance of Indian Hinduism led to the introduction of sitar music to Western listeners.

"In his most obvious contribution to music as lead guitarist for the Beatles, George Harrison provided the band with a lyrical style of playing in which every note mattered," wrote Bruce Eder for AllMusic.com.

"Later on, as a songwriter with the Beatles and subsequently as a solo artist, Harrison used his celebrity and his musical sensibilities to try and raise the awareness of millions of listeners about issues much bigger than music."

That's probably what sticks out in my memory of George Harrison. His music always had an other–worldly aura to it. Sometimes it was subtle, other times it wasn't so subtle. But it was always about things that were bigger than the music alone.

Music was where Harrison found his sense of purpose. He perceived, as many do, that his true mission in life was to seek a higher power, and I feel that, ultimately, he believed he had reached it through his music.

But there was, as I say, the humanitarian side of Harrison that really got its chance to blossom when the Beatles broke up.

Do spirituality and sensitivity exist as separate entities? That is a different argument — and one in which I prefer not to engage on this occasion.

But I will say this: As much as I admired Lennon and as much respect as I have for what McCartney has done musically, Harrison truly distinguished himself post–Beatlemania — apart from writing and recording popular songs and beyond anything the other three did.

Harrison was, as John Donne wrote centuries ago, "involved in mankind."

He was really the first to organize a benefit concert featuring several big–name performers, a pioneer whose experiences still serve as useful guides for what to do and what not to do. His concerts for Bangladesh truly blazed a trail for others to follow.

I sensed a certain amount of peace in the last years of his life — peace that may have been missing when he was young and his pursuit of the spiritual world often seemed to be at odds with the people and things that surrounded him.

That pursuit didn't get any easier as he got older. In 1999, he was stabbed by an intruder in his home, an ironic turn of events, considering that, in the 19 years since Lennon's murder, Harrison may have been the most reclusive of the surviving Beatles, avoiding most public appearances and probably taking more security precautions than McCartney or Starr.

He had been diagnosed with throat cancer a couple of years earlier, but it seemed to have been successfully treated and nothing more was heard about that until 2001, when it was revealed, in successive months, that he had been treated for lung cancer and a brain tumor.

The final months of his life were hardly peaceful. There were reports that his death was near, even when it turned out not to be true.

And then there was the report that was true. In mid– to late November, it was reported that George Harrison was expected to die within days.

And so he did.

Maybe age — as it has long been rumored to do — brought him peace and wisdom even though he was only 58 when he died.

Both were well earned.

Ravi Shankar Is 90

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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.