1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 204. Ananda Shankar – Ananda Shankar (1970)

 

Just because an Indian musician has the same surname, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re related to Ravi Shankar. However, in this case, Ananda is Ravi’s nephew, so it was a safe assumption to make.

Ananda’s uncle introduced classical Indian raga to Western audiences, and then Western bands (notably The Byrds, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin) took elements of raga and put them in their songs, either a full-on sitar ‘n’ tabla affair or just using the modes of raga to inform guitar solos and jams. Here we come full circle, with Ananda Shankar playing Western music with Indian instruments, including versions of Light My Fire and Jumping Jack Flash. The effect is mixed, hovering somewhere between cheese and genius. Jumping Jack Flash is great fun, the more bossa-nova inspired Mamata/Affection sounds to me like bad Indian restaurant muzak, but then most bossa nova sounds pretty disposable to me.

Shankar then moves into a kind of fusion, following more traditional Indian music but with added Moog synthesizer to make a kind of trippy raga/space rock/trance mélange, especially the spacy Metamorphosis. Apparently traditionalists hated the fusion, but then to my mind purists of all stripes are in danger of being fools at best, so let them seethe.

It’s got a very student bedroom feels to it, and on the YouTube version I was listening to some of the comments mention the old student practice of using the album cover as a surface for rolling joints. You don’t need to be stoned to enjoy this album though. It’s probably not one I’ll rush back to but it’s an interesting exercise in raga/electronica fusion.

[Added in edit 23rd July. I don't normally add these kinds of things in, but since I came to love Black Sabbath through following this list, I felt the need to add: Farewell Ozzy, may your music live on.]