Words matter. These are the best Ravi Shankar Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I have my own spiritual guru, and I’m so happy, and I feel so satisfied that I might appreciate many other famous gurus, but, you know, I am not attracted that way because I have found the person.
I was admired by all these hippies, and it was wonderful playing at Monterey and Woodstock, performing for half a million people.
Pop changes week to week, month to month. But great music is like literature.
In the olden days, I believe Mozart also improvised on piano, but somehow in the last 200 years, the whole training of Western classical music – they don’t read between the lines, they just read the lines.
I love the work of Matisse and Picasso, but I don’t have enough millions to own one. And I don’t really believe in owning art, anyway.
Many people, especially young people, have started listening to sitar since George Harrison, one of the Beatles, became my disciple.
I enjoy seeing other Indian musicians – old and young – coming to Europe and America and having some success. I’m happy to have contributed to that.
Ah, ‘Pather Panchali’ was the most inspiring film that I wrote music for, and it was so spontaneously done. I saw the film, composed on the spot, along with myself and only four other musicians, and everything was done within 4-1/2 hours, I think an all-time record anywhere.
Everybody has a right to like or dislike anything or anyone. From a flower to a flavor to a book or a composition but it is very sad that in our country we actually fight over such things in an unseemly manner.
I started out as a dancer, but gradually became more interested in music.
I have always had an instinct for doing new things. Call it good or bad, I love to experiment.
When people say that George Harrison made me famous, that is true in a way.
My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: ‘Indian music,’ they said, ‘is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.’
My secret ambition was always to provide music for animation films: something with an Indian theme, either a fairy tale or mythological tale or on the Krishna theme. I still have a very deep desire, but these sorts of chances don’t always come.
The music that I have learned and want to give is like worshipping God. It’s absolutely like a prayer.
I appreciate very much Vilayat Khan, the sitar player, and Bismillah Khan, the shehnai player; and among the tabla players, of course, Alla Rakha, Kishan Maharaja, and all these people.
I was invited for the first Woodstock. Actually, I started the programme.
