Anoushka Shankar declares that the sitar remains ‘my first language’

Anoushka Shankar has one of the most identifiable last names in music. Her father, Ravi, was a world-renowned Indian sitar player who influenced musicians as diverse as Beatles guitarist George Harrison, minimalist composer Philip Glass and violin master Yehudi Menuhin.

Shankar began studying the sitar when she was 9 and has gone on to become an internationally known virtuoso in own right, collaborating with Herbie Hancock, Norah Jones (her half-sister) and Sting, and bridging the worlds of Indian classical music, electronica, jazz and flamenco, among others. 

The London-based musician will bring her quintet, which includes Arun Ghosh, clarinet; Sarathy Korwar, drums; Pirashanna Thevarajah, percussion, and Tom Farmer, bass, to Orchestra Hall for a Symphony Center Presents concert Oct. 13.

The visit is part of Shankar’s first North American tour since the COVID-19 shutdown. It began Oct. 5 at the Ridgefield (Conn.) Playhouse and runs through Oct. 22, with stops along the way in Montreal, Toronto, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and San Francisco.

Her program will include selections from a new four-track mini-album, released Oct. 5, on the Leiter label. Titled “Chapter I: Forever, For Now,” it is the first release in a trilogy of mini-albums that Shankar is producing between tours.   

From the road, Shankar spoke about her love of the sitar, her quintet and her concert in Chicago:

You began studying the sitar when you were 9. Was there ever any doubt that you would make that instrument your own?

Yeah, totally. I started learning it from when I was young, and I also did piano, I did Bharatanatyam dance, and I did Kathak dance. It was always kind of the most weighted option, with my father being who he was and playing and teaching me. But everyone was really clear that it was an option and not a forced decision. So throughout the years of playing I would always maintain that I wasn’t necessarily positive I was going to do forever or anything like that. The thing was through my teenage years, I started performing more and more, and I started going on tour. By the time I finished high school, I was already a fully touring musician. So I had fallen in love with it by then.

What is the appeal of the sitar for you?

It’s a bit like what language you speak. For me, sitar is musically is my first language. It’s hard for us to analyze what the appeal is of speaking in the language we know. But it’s how I express myself musically the best. I love writing for other sounds, but when I really want to say something, so to speak, I feel like I do that best with my sitar. It’s an incredibly expressive instrument. It’s a very dynamic instrument, and it hasn’t bored me, yet.

Did you feel like you had to carry on your father’s legacy after his death in 2012 and still somehow maintain your own artistic identity at the same time?

No. I struggled with that one, but quite early on, I almost had to choose that I wasn’t going to try and maintain any legacy of his. And that any legacy that would live through me would happen naturally through his teaching and through it being in my voice rather than any kind of overt attempt on my part to try and fill his shoes. I think any idea of legacy comes more externally and not from the way I approach my music.

You like to bridge musical styles and origins. Why is that important to you?

I’m a product myself of many cultures, many countries, and I suppose I make music that represents who I am or the world I live or sometimes the world I wish we all lived in. I find it really fascinating when we find common ground or new ways to bridge between one style and another. I also just really find it inspiring to work with my instrument that is so synonymous with Indian classical music but to keep taking it out of that context and challenging that listening experience that people think they are having as soon as they see the sitar.

Where do you reside?

For the last 14-15 years, London has been my main home and my sole home, really, even though depending on the year, I’ve traveled a lot for music. But I had kids starting 12 years ago, and that really rooted me. I lived in California for a really long time, and I lived in Delhi for a long time, so they feel like places I’ve come from or feel at home, but London is my current home.

How often do you tour North America?

The pandemic really changed that. It was pretty much every year without fail before that. Since the pandemic, that was the first time I didn’t come back for two years, and then when I did come back, I’ve basically over the last year been doing the type of shows it felt safe to book from London. Like a single show at Kennedy Center with one orchestra or one show in L.A. So this is actually my first  [North American] tour since 2019.

Why does the quintet format work well for you?

It’s less about the number of musicians and more about the nature of the instruments and the musicians themselves. With every album, I’ve slightly or completely changed my band to represent the sound of more of what I’m currently making. But over the last 15 years, the one thing that has stayed relatively consistent is that I really like having in my ensemble a wind instrument or a bowed instrument or both, because that obviously serves as a counter to my plucked sitar. So having a flute or a shehnai [a kind of Indian double-reed instrument] or now a clarinet helps having melodies that weave and wind in a way that sitar can’t. And so, I think that counter feels really important.

In this band, I’ve got that clarinet and upright bass, and that bass tonality doesn’t really exist in Indian classical music, but through all the crossover work I’ve done, I’ve really fallen in love with having that through-line in the music in the lower registers. I’ve found playing with upright bass to be really joyful, and I really enjoy that. Then on the percussion side, it’s really interesting to have percussionists from different traditions instead of just a drum kit, to have Indian percussion and have it together.

I’m always looking at the over-all picture — the registers we are all in, the kind of instruments we are — but I have to say that it is the musicians themselves. These guys are really all quite unique, wonderful musicians who operate in unusual musical worlds themselves, so they’re are all used to traveling between worlds the way I do. Forming this band last winter was really inspiring, and I feel a real sense of freedom playing with these guys.

What should attendees expect at your Chicago concert?

We’re doing a couple of different things. We are playing music from my new mini-album, and we’re also playing a fair amount of music from older albums and a couple of things that are not on my albums. But with each of them, we’re doing what I find really inspiring, which is to reinterpret pieces and to really live with the sound world we have on stage. For example, weaving four of five songs together into a suite and having the arrangement change or stretch for improvisation.

So the live show exists in a space that doesn’t quite exist on any of my albums as a result of that, which I find very exciting as a musician. It’s also a mix of the very dynamic and fiery at certain moments and also the meditative and mellow at other moments. We are trying to have that range in the show.