Anoushka Shankar

Anoushka Hemangini Shankar, born in London on 9 June 1981, is a British-American sitar player and musician of Indian origin, as well as an occasional writer and actress. Her work belongs to an era in which Indian classical music has moved easily across concert halls, recording studios, electronic production, and global collaborations. She performs in classical and contemporary settings, acoustic and electronic, and has built a career that keeps the sitar at the center while allowing it to meet many other sounds.

Shankar’s early life was divided between London and Delhi, and as a teenager she lived in Encinitas, California, where she attended San Dieguito High School Academy. She is the daughter of Sukanya Rajan and sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, and through her father is the half-sister of singer Norah Jones and Shubhendra “Shubho” Shankar. Music entered her life early and formally: she began sitar training at eight with Gaurav Mazumdar, one of her father’s disciples, and from the age of ten accompanied her father on tanpura at his performances.

Her first public sitar performance came on 27 February 1995, when she was 13, at Siri Fort in New Delhi during her father’s 75th birthday celebration concert, with Zakir Hussain accompanying her on tabla. That same year she had her first recording-studio experience when Angel Records released In Celebration, a four-CD box set marking Ravi Shankar’s birthday. By 14 she was accompanying her father around the world, and at 15 she assisted him on Chants of India, produced by George Harrison, handling notation and later conducting the performers. At 16, she signed an exclusive recording contract with Angel/EMI.

Shankar released her debut album, Anoushka, in 1998, followed by Anourag in 2000. After graduating from high school with honors in 1999, she chose touring as a solo artist over attending university. Her third album, Live at Carnegie Hall, made her the youngest nominee in the Grammy Awards’ World Music category in 2003, the same year her half-sister Norah Jones was also nominated. She later released RISE in 2005, her first self-produced, self-composed non-classical album, and in February 2006 became the first Indian to play at the Grammy Awards.

Her recordings since then have shown the breadth of her interests. With Karsh Kale she released Breathing Under Water in 2007, mixing classical sitar with electronica and featuring guests including Norah Jones, Sting, and Ravi Shankar. After signing with Deutsche Grammophon in 2011, she released projects including Traveller, an exploration of links between flamenco and Indian classical music, Traces of You, released after her father’s death and featuring Norah Jones, Home, a purely classical album of Indian ragas, and Land of Gold. Later came Reflections in 2019 and the EP Love Letters in 2020.

Across her career, Shankar has received fourteen Grammy nominations and was the first musician of Indian origin to perform live and serve as a presenter at the ceremony. She has also appeared on recordings by artists including Sting, Lenny Kravitz, Thievery Corporation, Nitin Sawhney, and Herbie Hancock. Her words carry the same open quality as her music. “There is great strength in vulnerability” fits an artist whose work has moved between discipline, family inheritance, collaboration, and personal expression.