Behind the Music

A no-holds-barred account of Pandit Ravi Shankar’s incredible career and tumultuous private life

- Partho Datta

This is a meticulously researched biography— detailed, judicious, engaging and illuminating. Not since Marie Seton’s Portrait of a Director: Satyajit Ray (1971), has anything comparable been attempted for a major contemporary Indian cultural figure. Oliver Craske has worked hard for many years and trawled the public records of Ravi Shankar, who died in 2012, across many continents and in India. His project had the unqualified support of Shankar’s second wife Sukanya and his daughter Anoushka who opened the family archives and encouraged a no-holds-barred account. Shankar’s trailblazing public career and his tumultuous private life fit into a pattern. As biographical accounts of Arturo Toscanini and Leonard Bernstein—comparable figures from EuroAmerican cultures—show, creative freedom and sexual drive often stood in for each other, generating the restless persona that was the modern artist.