Top 50 Anoushka Shankar Quotes

But when culture becomes a baggage, things don’t work. What is good about anything that feels like a baggage? I think we should let go when it feels like a burden. Hold on to the things you love. Then it will be a natural process.

My father had a sitar made for me that was half the size of a normal one.

I suppose if you make enough money with one album, you can relax the rest of your life. I would rather go for smaller and stronger successes.

I feel ‘Love Letters’ has been part of a longer journey towards a very simple, international sound in which the sitar is no longer exotic or classical, but simply a tool of expression when juxtaposed with the voice and cross-genre elements.

As a child I’d sit at dinner parties with artists, authors and musicians, some of the best people in their fields. I couldn’t avoid the path I took having grown up in such an artistic environment.

I just felt drawn towards the kind of music that really needed a strong female presence female writers, female producers, female figures and that just kind of unfolded on its own.

Some of the more intensive scrutiny when I was first starting out definitely used to be tough to handle; I was only a teenager, yet was being analysed in newspapers world over, often by people who already had a strong opinion about my privilege before hearing me play.

There is great strength in vulnerability, as it takes courage to push through the fear and share one’s true self with others. In music, that vulnerability really speaks to listeners as it connects with their own hearts.

I always had musicians in my band having children, and their wives were the ones at home taking care of the kids. So I never thought much of it. And then suddenly I’m the parent, but I’m the woman, and it’s like, ‘Ah, what happens now?’

I have been in public for a long time, so the camera was never an issue for me. I am very comfortable in front of a camera.

With ‘Peradam’, the nature of the project was such that it was deeply immersed in spiritual concepts in India and is based on the works of French poet Rene Daumal.

However, I need to make music that represents my inner truth and inner voice. I’ve found myself more able to do that within an international space that has an Indianness at its root but branches out to encompass sounds and cultures across borders.

I live in the modern world, and I appreciate the most cutting-edge parts of it. But I also like to check out as much as I can.

But there was a lot of pressure to achieve and to get things right, whether in school, on stage or with my peers and family.

Alchemy is one of the good quote-unquote south-Asian experiences in that it has a wide variety of classical to experimental music.

My memories of mealtimes are a real bleed of music and food. Music never really stopped in the music room, because everyone would move out to the table with their sitars.

Having my own studio at home is a dream, as I have a totally sound-proof room I can escape to when I need to write, and I have an impeccable room to record in.

I hope it isn’t exclusively true, but I often find that collaboration is the best way… to reach my highest musical place. Because I get so inspired by another good musician; I feed off that.

Home’ was a special album for very specific reasons. It is an homage to my father. And it is the first classical album I’ve released in over a decade. So it really felt like a kind-of coming back to my roots.

Music is my passion, it’s my fun – but what’s really important are the people I build a family with. That comes first.

I love it that my father is such a classical musician and such a traditionalist, and at the same time has had a wild life and a crazy time.

I would say ‘Home’ is a lot richer and deeper than my earlier classical.

The sitar is a really difficult instrument to play. Physically it’s taxing because of the cross-legged sitting position, the length of the neck on the shoulder, the thinness of the strings. There’s a lot of pain, especially at the start.

In a studio context, the music becomes greater than the sum of its parts. When you have collaboration, you have other people’s strengths that I don’t share, so my song can get stronger.

I work in the music world in a kind of very multi-faceted way. I work around the world, in different genres.

Shiraz’ is an important part of our filmmaking and cultural history.

I try and approach other music with sensitivity. And, if it’s music I don’t know, I try and work with other people who are well-versed it in, so that it’s done sensitively.

So many silly things happen with a baby around. We laugh more than we expected.

On ‘Love Letters’ I focused exclusively on sung music, creating a collection of songs that directly address heartbreak and its ensuing emotions in a way that instrumental music can only hint at.

Even though my parents raised me in a very individualistic way, they were also strict and traditional, which was good. It was hard to sneak out! I think I was quite wild, but in some ways quite contained.

My mother is an amazing vocalist and a lot of my grounding in music has come from her. She was a student of Lakshmi Shankar, my father’s sister- in- law.

In the last few years in particular, I’ve found that it’s okay to let go of culture rather than hold on to it. And by letting go, you kind of realise that it’s there anyway.

My shows have room for a bit of improvisation. In a film, you can’t have that risk; you can’t have someone taking 10 seconds longer.

Even though my father had a really successful career before the ’60s, that kind of insane pop-culture splash that happened was so massive. People hear the sitar and immediately think, you know, flying carpets and tie-dyed T-shirts and wafting smoke.

I’ve worked hard and tried to approach my career with as much honesty and integrity as possible. I’ve also had many blessings along the way and feel very fortunate to have a career that speaks so much to my soul.

But I had a strong reaction to my first three albums and I struggle with them now, as an adult. It’s very much the same as looking at your teenage photos in high school.

My mother is half Malayali and half Tamilian. I can speak Bengali and Tamil, but can’t read or write.

Everybody gets opportunities; what you do with them is up to you.

On ‘Love Letters’, I focused exclusively on songs with lyrics, creating a collection of songs that directly address heartbreak and its ensuing emotions in a way that instrumental music can only hint at.

I do think evolution is an important aspect of keeping a tradition alive. If it freezes and remains very static in its form, it dies, and so a natural evolution has to occur.

Occasionally, if I’m in doubt over specific Indian classical or raga-related questions, I’ll find myself going back to my lesson tapes or my father’s recordings.

I love collaborations because they take your music in a different way.

My studio was built with a team of experts to record the sitar at the highest level possible, and I’m very happy with the results.

There’s a very primal, emotional response I feel when I hear flamenco.

The lockdown, in general, left me with a sense of needing to become more independent and instead of being intimidated, I decided to do the engineering on some of my new releases.

Usually, I really only look at any one particular album at a time when I’m making it. I’ve never really sat and looked at the journey through all of my albums to see if I could find a thread through them.

I think all kids are creative, so I wouldn’t say my kids are geniuses. But they immediately respond to music. And they’ve got great rhythm!

The kind of love people in India shower on me is overwhelming.

I had multiple circles of friends around the world. Some circles were really wild and I was affectionately known by them as ‘the nerdy one.’ And, with other friends, I was regarded as the wild one.

I think sometimes when you speak about something like ‘Indian classical music’ and ‘ragas,’ and all of that’s new to people, it can be quite intimidating, in the same way that I have sometimes found opera and Wagner intimidating – one doesn’t know where to begin sometimes.