Out of Print Gems: The Genius of Ravi Shankar

Though Ravi Shankar's recording career in the West began in the mid-1950s, it wasn't until after his introduction to George Harrison in the mid-60s that his fame (and the profile of Indian classical music as a whole) transcended the fringes of Western cultural consciousness. Within three years of Harrison's inclusion of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood," Indian instrumentation on pop records had already become something of a successful cliche, used to lend psychedelic ambience to the work of derivative songwriters unable to create something genuinely trippy on their own. An unintended consequence - and an unwelcome one for Harrison, whose obsessed admiration for the music was genuine - was that sitar music began to sell, primarily as an exotic soundtrack for journeys to altered states of consciousness. Record labels proved shameless in their exploitation of their unexpected target audience for music previously considered genuinely unmarketable, and though their classically trained musicians declined to adapt their art to contemporary tastes, their marketing departments showed no such compunction. Predictably, the anonymous liner notes to The Genius of Ravi Shankar describe the music the album contains as "more of [Shankar's] enthralling psychedelicacies," "as fresh and impelling and new as tomorrow night's dreams." Luckily, as the era in which record labels lost the audacity to publicly suggest that their customers "tune in and turn on" faded, the music endured, meaning large discographies, especially for Shankar and his most frequent collaborators. Liner notes aside, The Genius is something of an anomaly in that it's faded from print. Though most of Shankar's albums have been multiply reissued, and though Genius was issued on Columbia - perhaps the king among labels of quality rereleases of its back catalog - it has appeared only once on CD as it was originally issued. The music itself, if perhaps not quite as memorable as some of his astounding duets with Ali Akbar Khan, is nonetheless up to Shankar's formidable technical standard, and the album also features an excellent tabla solo from an uncredited Alla Rakha. It's a worthy addition to his legendary discography, one that deserves to be detached from its historical pigeonhole and enjoyed on its own terms. Interested parties can download it here.