The Rough Guide: Ravi Shankar

Pandit Ravi Shankar, a Bengali cultural catalyst if ever there was one, is the most famous Indian alive. When people say that India colonised the Western mind, much of it was of his doing, and when it came to getting people to pay heed to the wonders of Hindustani music, nobody ever surpassed Ravi Shankar - India's best-known sitar player opened the breach through which many others poured. Through his influence, this missionary, pioneer and experimenter changed the face of contemporary Western music. Blessed with a highly cosmopolitan background and a flair for adaptability, he was the right man in the right places at a rightly receptive time. Of worldwide influence, Ravi Shankar has managed to enter the non-Indian consciousness and vocabulary in a way that only a select pantheon have.