Anousha Shankar

We went to see Anoushka Shankar, daughter of renowned sitar guru, Ravi Shankar, perform at the Benaroya Hall last night. She performed an interesting set based on traditional Indian classical music, but with some Western influences.

Each song was performed in a different 'raga', which involved lots of tuning. At first I thought the sitar just required a lot of attention to keep in tune, but then surmised each 'raga' defines a different scale, and thus tuning of strings. This is actually the case, but a 'raga' also specifies the melody, which notes to emphasize and phrases to use and avoid.

http://www.anoushkashankar.com/