Anoushka Shankar

In a special, larger-than-life edition of Malishka Ki Slambook , Malishka connects with globally celebrated sitarist and composer Anoushka Shankar. From revealing her top three musicians of all time to speaking from the heart about her legendary father, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Anoushka opens up with grace, honesty, and depth. This episode is a powerful blend of legacy, inspiration, and music that transcends borders — an intimate conversation with one of India’s most iconic voices on the world stage. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anoushka Shankar's Sitar Evolution: The Echoes Podcast Anoushka Shankar has released an impressive trilogy of EPs in the last year that take her sitar in different directions. Chapter I: Forever For Now ; Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before the Dawn ; and Chapter III: We Return to Light , find Shankar in 3 different settings: World Fusion, Ambient and Improvisation. She also has three different producers including Pakistani-American singer and producer, Arooj Aftab . Over the last 2 decades or so Anoushka has found her own path in the music world that draws on the traditions her father, sitarist Ravi Shankar taught as well as his sense of experimentation. She’s taking the sitar in such new directions that sometimes you don’t know it’s a sitar at all. Anouska Shankar: So suddenly I could play one note and have it ring for 50 seconds and then become more orchestral than I usually am as a lead instrument, because I can layer these long, long 50 second reverb notes and think in that way where I’m creating a bed of sound. Anoushka Shankar. She could’ve just been a classical Indian sitarist, but she was brought up on pop and EDM music as well as Indian classical. She talks about it with John Diliberto in the Echoes Podcast. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="126347" data-permalink="https://echoes.org/shankar-trilogy/" data-orig-file="https://echoes.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/shankar-Trilogy.jpg" data-orig-size="1800,600" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="shankar Trilogy" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://echoes.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/shankar-Trilogy-1200x400.jpg" src="https://echoes.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/shankar-Trilogy-1200x400.jpg" al

Because she is the daughter of Ravi Shankar, perhaps the most famous Indian classical musician of the past century, Anoushka Shankar is associated with that style of music. But though she plays the sitar, and does indeed play Indian ragas in the style of her illustrious dad, she has also drawn on jazz, flamenco, various world and electronic music traditions, and more. Her new record, We Return To Love , is the conclusion of a trilogy of EPs. The masterful sitarist, film composer, and impassioned activist Anoushka Shankar presents the third chapter in her current trilogy of mini-albums, which explores her fascination with Goa Trance. She and her band perform live at National Sawdust, as part of the Grammy Museum's series, "A New York Evening With". Set list: Stolen Moments, New Dawn, Hiraeth, We Burn So Brightly, Amrita, Daybreak Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anoushka Shankar, Arooj Aftab, Lisa-Kaindé Diaz and Nadine Shah talk about the role of spirituality in their music, what their sound gives the audience, and share thoughts on being women of colour in the music industry. Born in the UK, Anoushka Shankar spent her younger years in London and Delhi before moving to California. She began learning the sitar aged 9 with her father, the legendary Ravi Shankar, and made her professional debut at 13. Since then has been nominated for nine Grammys, played everywhere from the Barbican to Carnegie Hall, and worked with a wide range of artists including Herbie Hancock, Patti Smith, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Jules Buckley and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Her latest project, a mini-album titled Chapter I: Forever, For Now, comes out in October. Arooj Aftab is a Grammy award winning Pakistani-American singer, composer, and producer whose musical styles cover everything from jazz to minimalism. She’s performed at Coachella, Glastonbury, and the Montreal Jazz Festival, and is also an Emmy winning documentary editor. She also produced Anouska’s latest album. Lisa-Kaindé Diaz is one-half of multilingual French-Cuban duo Ibeyi, whose work fuses jazz with beats, samples, and traditional instruments. They’ve released three studio LPs, appeared on Beyoncé’s groundbreaking visual album Lemonade, and have collaborated with Chilly Gonzales, Kamasi Washington and Jorja Smith. Nadine Shah is a Mercury Prize-nominated British singer-songwriter who has performed at Glastonbury and London's Barbican. She’s supported Patti Smith, Depeche Mode and Suede, recently made her acting debut in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and is currently working on her fifth album.