This is a fantastic gift that has just arrived.
It's the sitar of the great Indian maestro, Ravi Shankar.
What you're listening to here is Anoushka Shankar playing her father's own sitar
and this will be the last time that it's played
before it enters into the collections of the British Museum.
The part of me that sees it as an instrument, thinks it should be played
and therefore it shouldn't go in a glass box.
But at the same time I think these things are symbols as well
and they kind of have meaning that are bigger than the each individual item
and so as a symbol it's the instrument that my father played for so many years
and therefore it was part of a story that was bigger than itself.
Ravi Shankar's name is certainly the most well known of all Indian musicians
of the 20th century I would say, he was completely international
he worked all over the world, he was honoured wherever he went
and because he remained absolutely rooted in his own tradition
it allowed him to be engaged with ever so many different audiences.
Western musicians both classical and in the jazz sphere and, of course, famously with The Beatles.
It is strange to see pop musicians with sitars. When George Harrison came to me
I didn't know what to think, I never thought our meeting would cause such an explosion
that Indian music could suddenly appear on the pop scene.
Ravi Shankar actually started out life as a dancer when he was a young boy
in his brother's dancing troupe in Europe and he toured with them
and it was only when he was a little older that he returned to India
and studied the sitar more intensively and it was after that that he began to tour the world
and share this incredible Indian music.
I was a dancer in Paris, in my brother Uday's troupe
I was young in those days and very spoiled
I dressed like a dandy and chased girls all the time.
Then finally I left Paris
Taking a guru was the biggest decision of my life, it demanded absolute surrender
years of fanatic dedication and discipline
There's so much in our music that goes back thousands of years:
the prayers in our temples
the pain and struggle of life
the sound of the rivers
the timeless chants
so many things that are within me.
The office... welcome to the most important department in the museum
or we think so anyway!
So Sukanya Shankar and Anoushka Shankar came here to the Museum
with the musical instrument, with the sitar, in which it was formally accessioned into the Museum collection.
Now I want to ask you a little bit about the history of the instrument.
Do we know?
He had the special person, Nodu Malik.
So Nodu Malik was an instrument maker who made sitars exclusively for my father
and they are unparalleled, they're incredible instruments that are made
at the level of a Stradivarius for example and there are just small little differences
Nodu only made six sitars total in his lifetime
Wow. And it's made of several different woods isn't it?
It is, the whole top neck is teak.
But the actual belly... that's a gourd
Which is part of the body of the instrument
That's the resonator... yeah and then there's a second detachable gourd
just for ease of moving it around.
And then there's a lot of ornamental variations where people do carvings on to the tumba
and those will be wood, put onto the tumba so it kind of does combine
Anoushka Shankar has spent some 20 years playing with her father
He was you know, her father, as well as her teacher, which is a really important bond.
I think it's quite interesting now to see her now trailblazing a path of her own.
She is composing film scores she's performing at many different concerts
with many different musicians of different traditions as well
so she's not only inheriting her father's incredible legacy but she's creating her own
I'd learnt with him from when I was seven but I've performed with him onstage for 20 years
so we had this incredibly symbiotic - telepathic almost - relationship through playing music together.
But in order to find my own way with the instrument I had to do my best to ignore its legacy in history
in context of my own life, you know so, whereas I loved to play and I wanted to learn from my father
I always had to kind of minimise the noise of and that means you're carrying on this legacy
and that means that you have to follow in his footsteps and all that stuff that made it feel fearful
and like a pressure. So my way of finding my way with the instrument was to kind of
just put all of that to the side and of course yet it's still present so as I play and as I travel
the world playing the way he did, there is a continuation that's happening in and of itself
where I'm continuing to share our art and culture with the world through playing the music
So it's very much there but I had to kind of not think of it that way in order to do it.
I want to work with students who are serious
create an atmosphere where they can receive the best out of our culture
I want to give them a classical base for understanding
for without it they will never realise the magic and beauty of the music.
She was seven when I asked him will you teach her.
First his reaction was 'what! I've never taught any young people I can't do it'
So I said can you not try? and he says no, that was it.
I think he felt bad that he said that to me.
The next thing I see is her in the puja room and he tries to teach her.
I was expecting maybe 10 minutes or something they were there for 3 hours
I couldn't believe it and I just couldn't believe it and he came out and he said I'm going to teach her
For me there is always that wanting to reach something
that I know beforehand I never will
and each note is like crying out... searching.