bdmetronews desk ॥ Today’s Google Doodle was designed by artist Kevin Laughlin and features the sitar.
It has two bridges, one for the “drone” strings and the other for the melody strings. Laughlin’s design depicts the style of sitar Shankar played, which includes a second gourd-shape resonator at the top of the instrument’s neck.
The Doodle can be seen in browsers in the USA, Britain, Sweden and several other European countries, as well as India, Indonesia and Japan.
Who was Ravi Shankar?
Pandit Ravi Shankar, was the virtuoso sitar maestro who introduced Indian classical music to the world and inspired the Sixties ‘psychedelic’ sound through his collaboration with the Beatles.
Shankar was born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury in Benares (a.k.a. Varanasi, or Kashi), West Bengal, on April 7 1920 and raised by his mother in a Bengali brahmin community.
His father, Pandit Dr Shyam Shankar Chowdhury, a wealthy landowner and minister in a maharaja’s court, left his family in poverty and went to Calcutta and then London to practise law.
The youngest of five surviving brothers (two other children had died, at birth and in early childhood), Shankar was nicknamed Ravi, meaning “the sun”.
He met his father for the first time when he was eight years old.
Ravi Shankar’s talented daughters
Shankar’s eldest daughter and protege Anoushka is now a respected sitarist in her own right.
His other daughter, the jazz pianist and singer-songwriter Norah Jones, was born in 1979 as a result of a clandestine affair Shankar had with the New York concert producer Sue Jones. She has since sold tens of millions of albums.
