Raga

Raga (1971)

A film journey into the soul of India.

A Film Journey to the Soul of India documents the life of sitar master Ravi Shankar in the late 1960s and early 1970s, following him on his return to India to revisit his guru, Bengali multi-instrumentalist and composer, Baba Ustad Allauddin Khan. It further explores Shankar's life as a musician and teacher in the United States and Europe, initiating those in the West to the exceptional world that is Indian classical music and culture. Through rare and candid footage shot in both India and the United States, Raga sheds light on Shankar's influences and collaborations, from Allauddin Khan to his famed dancer brother Uday Shankar, to his associations with Western musicians Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison. Fully narrated by Shankar himself, the film reveals music as the soul of India and of Shankar's life.

Date of release
1971-11-23
TMDB
9.0 / 10 (2)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
Music, Documentary
Director
Howard Worth

Casting

Interesting facts

Raga is a 1971 documentary film about the life and music of Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, produced and directed by Howard Worth. It includes scenes featuring Western musicians Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison, as well as footage of Shankar returning to Maihar in central India, where as a young man he trained under the mentorship of Allauddin Khan. The film also features a portion of Shankar and tabla player Alla Rakha's acclaimed performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

Production

New York film-maker Howard Worth began work on Raga, a documentary film on Indian classical musician Ravi Shankar, in 1967, during the height of what Shankar describes in My Music, My Life (1968), the first of his two autobiographies, as "the great sitar explosion".

Speaking in 2010 of his involvement in Raga, Worth recalled that he disliked Indian music initially, but soon changed his view. At the request of Canadian television producer Nancy Bacal, he attended a private recital by Shankar, in the company of singers Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen, a performance that convinced Worth that he wanted to direct the planned Shankar documentary after all.

The film was originally called East Meets West, according to author Peter Lavezzoli; Messenger Out of the East was an alternative working title. The first of these titles referenced West Meets East, Shankar's 1966 album with American violinist Yehudi Menuhin, and the winner of the 1967 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.

Much of Raga was shot during the first half of 1968 in India, particularly Bombay, home to Shankar's Kinnara School of Music since 1963. Among the scenes filmed in India, Shankar directs musicians such as Shivkumar Sharma, Hariprasad Chaurasia and Kartick Kumar in a Bombay studio and, in a scene titled "Vinus House", enjoys a casual musical get-together with singer Vinay Bharat Ram and violinist Satyadev Pawar.

Early in the film, Shankar travels by train to the Madhya Pradesh town of Maihar, to see his father-in-law and esteemed music teacher (or guru), Allauddin Khan, known affectionately as "Baba". Worth recalls this visit as a nervous occasion for Shankar, who states in his role as narrator: "Whenever I think of [Baba], I have a mixture of fear and awe.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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