Customer Reviews

Vision of Peace: The Art of Ravi Shankar

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Ravi Shankar is a very great musician and his music represent the profound and spiritual tradition of Indian classical music. His experiments are not just limited to Indian music and in this 2-CD collection, you can see the popular and easy-listening tracks in the first CD and a pure classical and elaborate exploration of the meditative raga Jogeshwari in the second CD. The second CD also has a lilting evening melody called Hameer. Highly recommended.

This compilation collects several of Ravi Shankar's lesser known but crucial recordings. The second disc captures two essential of his known explorations into the ragas that are the standard of Indian classical music but leave much ground for improvisation. The first disc however, is the stand out as it finally brings to cd, a long out of print lp "East Greets East" that has Ravi Shankar playing with known Japanese classical musicians and the interplay between the Japanese classical pieces (with standard instrumentation such as the koto and shakuhachi) and the sitar and tabla (with room for solo works from each group) create an essential interplay between two genres of traditional ethnic music that leave out the new age trappings that often dampen the genre of world music. This is one of Ravi Shankar's most successful collaborations becauase: West Meets East: The Historic Shankar Menuhin Collection is somewhat unsuccesful in that Ravi Shankar's music does not benefit from traditional western orchestration and:
Passages although an idea that was long overdue (since Philip Glass was inspired to begin his journey into minimalism by working with directly with Ravi Shankar) is somewhat less than successful again due to the quasi new age aspects of the work (a genre which has become dated, while the important works within it have returned to the original genres they stemmed from as new age from the beginning was destroyed by rampant commercialism). Although clearly as a first listen one would purchase a more known work by Ravi Shankar such as:
India's Master Musician with "Vision of Peace" having three classic ragas plus an exploration into world music that has never been attempted before or since by Ravi Shankar this is a well worthwhile purchase.

I live in an area with almost no world cuisine culture, and I wanted to introduce my family to the tastes and sounds of India. I purchased this CD for background music to go with a nice spicy biryani. CD #2 provided the PERFECT background music to a perfect meal! The instruments are clear and crisp and the sound quality is amazing. It wisks you away to a far away land. I listened to the CD while cooking our meal and it felt as if I had entered into an Indian Restaurant, or at least what I imagined in my dreams that an Indian restaurant would be like. It set the perfect mood.

Party suggestion: Set the table low, wrap a Saree around you, brush up on your Indian table manners, glide CD #2 into the player and cook up a nice curry dinner. After dinner do some Henna Tattoos (kit) and try some bellydancing (DVD). What a nice treat for your family or friends.

I kept hearing about this guy since I've started trying to keep up with middle eastern and other ethnic music. I was surprised. There didn't seem to be anything trite in any of the songs. The music is both relaxing and engaging.