Great music, interesting life, good book!
April 01, 2020

'Indian Sun' - book about globe-hopping lifestyle and promiscuous romantic life of Ravi Shankar

Oliver Craske, "a biographer who understands the intricacies of classical Indian music and the labyrinths of a culture that believes there’s no enterprise that can’t be improved by being made more complicated", published 'The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar' about the great Indian sitar player. The exhaustive book, Guardian says, portrays the "restless workaholic, often melancholic genius... unassailable maestro and guardian of his country’s music". Craske handles the niceties of Shankar’s personal life with diplomacy - he married his teacher's daughter Annapurna Devi, which was an arranged and problematic marriage, had an affair with US concert promoter Sue Jones – with whom he had a daughter, the future star Norah Jones, and had another affair with an old friend Sukanya Rajan, whom he would later marry, and had a daughter Anoushka, who also grew into musical stardom. Great music, interesting life, good book!