Ravi Shankar - Tana Mana - 1987

 

Published by Private Music in 1987, Tana Mana (which means "body and mind") is the work of Ravi Shankar that gave rise to the popularization of the term "World Music", since his proposal focuses on the fusion of Eastern and Western elements. tackling a new path in which Indian, jazz and electronic music are unified.

Precisely the term "World Music" has been, since then, paradoxical for understanding, or is it that not all music is of the world? The name was adopted in 1987 in an attempt to find a term that would reflect the globalizing spirit of the 1980s. The desire of the record companies to sell sided with certain musicians from the Southern Hemisphere and from the East who, based on their native folklore, not only explored audacious fusions with the West, but also sometimes achieved considerable success, maintaining the category of myths or teachers that they enjoyed in their respective countries. Youssou N'Dour, Ali Farka Touré, Ladysmith Black Mambazo or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan are just some of the undeniably successful names. Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon or David Byrne are Western musicians who helped promote this label and certain artists of great interest, but for other illustrious artists such as Philip Glass there is no doubt that the Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar was key -even father- of that movement , years before its institution.

After decades of work and popularity in India and numerous trips around the world, Ravi Shankar met the Beatle George Harrison in 1966 and became his teacher (Harrison himself is a claim in Tana Mana, when he answered the call of his mentor and friend to play on the same zither and synthesizer). To make the leap to the general public, Ravi chose to make things easier, merging with other styles and instruments and shortening the duration of the songs, more in line with Western taste and radio broadcasting. Even so, despite not playing the music that the purists of his country demanded of him, this maestro achieved his goal of "not losing the Indianness of his music." Furthermore, with adaptations like this one, not without soul, Ravi took an important step to keep Indian classical music alive in the contemporary world, paving the way for other notable musicians, such as his own daughter Anoushka Shankar.

Shankar had great popularity in the US when the Beatles "discovered" him to the West, he settled in the United States and gave populous concerts, and was re-released for the general public thanks to the good eye of producer Peter Baumann for Private Music, where he published three records at the end of the 1980s, just when the aforementioned "World Music" label was beginning to be established: Tana Mana (1987), a wonderful concert in Moscow called Inside the Kremlin (1988), and the splendid and essential collaboration with Philip Glass Passages ( 1990).

In Tana Mana, Indian instrumentalists (including the vocalist Lakshmi Shankar or Shubho Shankar - son of the master, who died in 1992) merge with American names such as those of the producers (Peter Baumann and Frank Serafine) or those of Patrick O'Hearn ( on bass), Ray Cooper (Marimba), Al Cooper (guitar) or the aforementioned George Harrison. Tana Mana, composed by Ravi Shankar a year after suffering a heart attack, is a beautiful succession of singing pieces that go beyond continents and eras to abide by the universality of Indian music and make it known to the rest of the world, in its more affordable facet, through one of its great supporters. (Source: Winter Solstice)

Tracks list:

01. Chase

02. Tana Mana

03. Village Dance

04. Seven and 10½

05. Friar Park

06. Romantic Voyage

07. Memory of Uday

08. West Eats Meat

09. Reunión

10. Supplication