Ravi Shankar Quotes

Enlightenment is the journey back from the head to the heart.

In India, I have been called a 'destroyer.' But that is only because they mixed my identity as a performer and as a composer. As a composer I have tried everything, even electronic music and avant-garde. But as a performer I am, believe me, getting more classical and more orthodox, jealously protecting the heritage that I have learned.

The music that I have learned and want to give is like worshipping God. It's absolutely like a prayer.

I enjoy seeing other Indian musicians - old and young - coming to Europe and America and having some success. I'm happy to have contributed to that.

I was admired by all these hippies, and it was wonderful playing at Monterey and Woodstock, performing for half a million people.

I was invited for the first Woodstock. Actually, I started the programme.

I have my own spiritual guru, and I'm so happy, and I feel so satisfied that I might appreciate many other famous gurus, but, you know, I am not attracted that way because I have found the person.

One single raga can be performed for two hours, three hours.

I appreciate very much Vilayat Khan, the sitar player, and Bismillah Khan, the shehnai player; and among the tabla players, of course, Alla Rakha, Kishan Maharaja, and all these people.

I will keep playing as long as my body lets me, and as long as I'm wanted by my listeners. Because music is the only thing that keeps me going.

What Sri Chinmoy does is God-given! He has a tremendous, a fantastic creative urge.

I love the work of Matisse and Picasso, but I don't have enough millions to own one. And I don't really believe in owning art, anyway.

When people say that George Harrison made me famous, that is true in a way.

I started out as a dancer, but gradually became more interested in music.

My music has a very spiritual background, a sanctity that is almost like worship.

'Ravi' means 'sun.' It's a Sanskrit original word. And 'Shankar' is another name of Shiva, one of the holy trinity god that we worship.

Everybody has a right to like or dislike anything or anyone. From a flower to a flavor to a book or a composition but it is very sad that in our country we actually fight over such things in an unseemly manner.

My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: 'Indian music,' they said, 'is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.'

Ah, 'Pather Panchali' was the most inspiring film that I wrote music for, and it was so spontaneously done. I saw the film, composed on the spot, along with myself and only four other musicians, and everything was done within 4-1/2 hours, I think an all-time record anywhere.

There cannot possibly be a god in heaven watching all of this calmly.

I try to give to my music the spiritual quality, very deep in the soul, which does something even if you are not realizing it or analyzing it - that's the duty of the music.

I believe in one thing: that anyone who is able to do something good for someone, I mean, should be praised.