Anoushka Shankar: June Musician of the Month

Our June Musician of the Month was born on June 9, 1981: Anoushka Shankar — sitar virtuosa, composer, and one of the most adventurous musicians of her generation.

Her first sitar teacher was her father. Her father was Ravi Shankar — the maestro who carried Indian classical music to the West and taught George Harrison of the Beatles. Growing up as the daughter and student of a legend could have overwhelmed a young musician. Anoushka Shankar built one of the great musical careers of our time out of it.

Early Life and Inspirations

Anoushka was born in London and grew up between London, Delhi, and California, the daughter of Sukanya Rajan and Ravi Shankar, who was sixty-one when she was born. She began studying sitar at nine, in the centuries-old Indian tradition where music passes directly from master to student. Her father had a special sitar built small enough for a child’s hands.

The training was rigorous, daily, and entirely by ear; Indian classical music is learned from a teacher’s playing, not from sheet music. At thirteen, she gave her first public performance at a concert honoring her father’s seventy-fifth birthday in New Delhi. At sixteen she signed a record deal. At seventeen she released her first album. There were no shortcuts in any of it; just a decade of practice beside a master who happened to tuck her in at night.

A Career Without Borders

By twenty, Anoushka had become the youngest nominee ever in the Grammys’ world music category, and the first Indian woman nominated for a Grammy at all. Fourteen nominations have followed, along with a first that says everything about the doors she has opened: in 2006 she became the first musician of Indian origin to perform live at the Grammy Awards ceremony.

What she did with her platform is the interesting part. Rather than simply inherit her father’s repertoire, she carried the sitar into places it had never been. Her album Traveller wove Indian ragas together with Spanish flamenco, two traditions that share deeper roots than most listeners realize. Traces of You paired her with her half-sister, the singer Norah Jones, in a family collaboration of heartbreaking beauty. She composed a live orchestral score for Shiraz, a 1928 silent film, and co-scored the BBC’s A Suitable Boy. Her recent trilogy of mini-albums, Chapter I through Chapter III, is some of the most personal music she has ever made.

The honors keep arriving; in June 2024, Oxford University awarded her an honorary doctorate in music. Not bad for an instrument many concert halls once treated as a novelty.

Tradition as a Launchpad

Here is what makes Anoushka Shankar matter to music students: she is living proof that deep training in one tradition doesn’t fence you in. It sets you free. Her flamenco collaborations work because she spent a decade mastering ragas. Her film scores work because improvising within strict rules, the heart of Indian classical music, is the best compositional training there is. She honors a heritage that stretches back centuries, and she answers to nobody about where she takes it next.

If that idea sounds familiar, it should: it’s the same lesson our July Musician of the Month, the jazz pianist Hiromi, teaches from the other side of the world. Rigorous roots, boundless branches.

What Students Can Learn from Anoushka Shankar

Trust the slow work. Anoushka spent years learning by ear at her teacher’s feet before the world heard a note of it. In a culture of overnight everything, her career is a case for the long way around: master the tradition in front of you, and it will carry you anywhere you want to go.

Start Listening

• Live at Carnegie Hall — the Grammy-nominated recording; pure Indian classical mastery at age twenty.
• Traveller — ragas meet flamenco. Start here if you want to hear borders dissolve.
• Traces of You — with her sister Norah Jones. Gorgeous, tender, and a beautiful story of family across two musical worlds.
• Chapter I: Forever, For Now — the recent, intimate Anoushka. Music for quiet evenings.

Whatever instrument your child is drawn to, the lesson holds: great training opens every door. Our private music lessons are where that starts.

Sign up for a FREE introductory lesson at The California Conservatory of Music today!