Anoushka Shankar

Anoushka Hemangini Shankar, born on June 9, 1981, in London, is a British-American sitarist and composer. The daughter of renowned musician Ravi Shankar, she began her musical journey under his tutelage, performing publicly at age thirteen. Her debut album, Anoushka, released in 1998, featured ragas adapted by her father. In 2000, she released Anourag and performed at Carnegie Hall, earning a Grammy nomination for the live recording in 2003. Shankar's career includes collaborations with artists such as Sting, Madonna, and Norah Jones, her half-sister. Notable albums include Rise (2005), which earned another Grammy nomination, Breathing Under Water with Karsh Kate (2007), and Traveller (2011), her first album for the German classical label Deutsche Grammophon. In this third Grammy nonmination, she explores the shared history between Indian classical music and flamenco, in its modern version. She pursued with Traces of You (2013), a tribute to her father following his death, produced by Nitin Sawhney and featuring Norah Jones. Shankar has also been involved in various humanitarian efforts, including advocacy for animal rights and support for the United Nations World Food Programme. In 2015, she released the self-composed and produced album Home, her first purely classical album of Indian ragas. In 2016 followed Land of Gold with various contributions, including a monologue of the British actress Vanessa Redgrave. Land of Gold Remixes came out the same year with new versions by Mogwai, Matt Robertson, Karsh Kate, Shiva Soundsystem, and Grain. After the release of the compilation Reflection in 2019, Shankar returned with the EP Love Letters (2020), featuring Ibeyi, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, and Shilpa Rao. She collaborated the same year with the Dalai Lama on his first music album Inner World and the Metropole Orkest on her live recording Between Us..., issued in 2022. The three next years saw the releases of the Chapter EP series, including Chapter I: Forever, for Now (2023), Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dawn (2024), and Chapter III: We Return to Light (2025).

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