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I saw Ravi and Anoushka play together 10 years ago and it is still one of the best performances I've ever witnessed. Anoushka broke a string, which I guess takes awhile to replace on a sitar, and Ravi just started giving a lesson on percussion with out missing a beat or breaking a sweat. He started lecturing about music and having the tabla players demonstrate. I left the Kimmel Center smiling ear to ear.

Sometimes talk about things like serenity and presence is shallow, because the authentic experience of spiritual depth is rare... Even in a room with 2500 people you could feel Ravi in the room and know you were in the presence of greatness. I guess that's what happens after years of dedication and spiritual discipline.

I won't hope to be half the man Ravi was. I'll be lucky to have even a speck of that kind of mastery in my life. I regret not seeking him out while he was alive. It would have been incredible to hear his music live one more time and to give him a hug and thank him for his immense contribution to the world. I'm grateful that I was even in the same room as him once and I'm grateful to live in a world create beautiful music and beautiful lives.

Pandit Ravi Shankar was just one of those masters from Indian subcontinent who happened to get famous and so comes to attention.

Back here in India, such people are quite common[Not to say they are all over the place, but you just don't hear about many of them]. Most of them just don't come up because of lack of encouragement, and proper ways of monetizing their art.

Just to tell you. Back in the past when I was in school. We would practice for hours singing devotional songs in Carnatic music. There was once a inter school competition, where you could sing in any genre you want. Our opposition school was totally convinced our 'old music' didn't stand a chance. To add to our bad luck, they had a complete band that could play with piano, guitar and band. We had none of that. Despite that, our singing was so damn awesome- we didn't just win. But looked something like 100 times more awesome than they were. In fact when the results were announced the judges said, they hadn't heard anything like that before. Coming from average middle class background, I couldn't even convince my parents to come and watch how I sang. No photographs were taken, none of it was recorded. On top of it my parents thought singing was an utter waste of time, and If I get too much into it I wouldn't study well- And so won't be able to get a good job. I wasn't able to rekindle my passion for music until later after I started earning.

There isn't a shortage of how many such competitions I participated in.

You will not believe how much of such talent goes wasted here. And even talent that some how continues into a full practice never gets any attention. Artists often live in poverty, and perform for peanuts. What that basically means is even talented kids don't want to take it up as a full time profession.

I think this is exaggerated on many levels.

1. There are dozens of famous and wealthy Indian classical musicians - Hariprasad Chaurasia, Zakir Hussain, Amjad Ali Khan, etc. There are hundreds if not thousands of lesser known musicians who make a living by teaching and performing in small venues.

2. Of course, many talented people are prevented by social custom or poverty from following their dream, but its simply not the case that there are hundreds of unrecognized geniuses walking around.

3. Ravi Shankar's success was not totally accidental - he didn't just "happen" to become popular. He was a great communicator, and he appropriately structured his music to be not too complex for beginners and westerners to understand. If you listed to his rivals like Ustad Vilayat Khan for example, they went the opposite way and added layers of complexity and did not achieve popularity among the masses.

I never said Ravi Shankar was 'just' lucky, did I?

But frankly this is survivor ship bias at its very best. Looking at it from my very own parents stand point. What are the odds that somebody like me was going to be the next Zakir Hussain[Who himself happens to be the son of a very famous Tabla player]?

So there you see the problem. If there isn't a way to make good money doing music. People are not going to be taking it up as a full time profession.

One thing I was really surprised by when I first visited India, no buskers! Every other big city I've ever visited has had people playing music everywhere for tips. Nowhere to be found in India.
Such people who play for tips[In India they are actually called beggars] are found in local trains, or bus stops where as a foreigner you are least likely to visit.

So now you know that its not a very honorable way of making money in India.

It's not considered a particularly honorable way of making money in the west either. We're just less concerned about honor.
I don't know if honor even enters into it, it's just not considered a particularly effective way of making money.
You're right, honor doesn't factor into it in the U.S. But it sounds like in India, musicians don't busk because they are afraid of being perceived as beggars. Which is unfortunate.
This is scary, Dave Brubeck passed away the other day and now Ravi Shankar (both pioneers in their own respectively different genres). We've lost quite a few musicians and prolific figures this year, a sign that I'm getting old myself. Living to the age of 90+ is quite an achievement in itself if you ask me.
Brubeck was a day from his 92nd birthday and Shankar was 92. That's a pretty good run for both.
It always seems to be this time of year for musicians lately. James Brown was Xmas 2006. Etta James and Johnnie Otis were January 2012...
how can Ravi Shanker that lived in this age be a pioneer of classical indian music genre? He was a pioneer in taking the genre to the west, yes, but not a pioneer of the genre itself. Rest in Peace.
He was a pioneer in the sense that he extended the classical Indian music genre in many ways (i.e. through innovative compositions and film scores that added many non-traditional elements)
I wonder who the third will be :/
"...Shankar was born in April 7, 1920, in Benares, a northern Indian city famous for its temples to the Hindu god Vishnu..."

For someone who confuses Shiva (the destroyer) with Vishnu (the maintainer), one has to wonder how much truth there actually is in that article.

I for one am taking it with a grain of salt. Like most things in west that are about east, it is not the facts that are important, but how good they have dressed into what west expects them to be (as something originating from east).

Is every famous musician death going to make it to the top of Hacker News from now on?
Yes, if the community around HN loves and has a certain respect to it.

I'll ask myself the same question. Is every nonsense comment going to make it to the top of a topic that people care from now on?

You think my question is nonsense? How would you feel if you saw a post about Erlang or Clojure on a site called "Music News?" Especially if you had been on the site for years, when it was actually about music news? FYI I play several instruments and I love(d) Ravi Shankar. However, this site is Hacker News. There is a limit.
I think if Music Lovers some how find relevance to the way Clojure or Erlang works and have been motivated/influenced by it they definitely would discuss it.

Music is a pretty popular topic among programmers. And many programmers/hackers are instrumentalists.

So it makes sense for them to discuss. Besides if somebody doesn't like it he can always chose to no up vote the story and not discuss. But if somebody else wants to, why should he have any problems at all?

This is the sort of slippery slope which deteriorated the culture of Reddit. Here's an example of the front page from 5 years ago: http://mashable.com/2012/05/10/reddit-2007/ If the users don't maintain a sense of courtesy and stay on topic, the noise to signal ratio will become intolerable.
Content isn't killing Reddit, users are. This post is clearly relevant to people based on the upvotes, yet here we are in a thread where someone decided it was more appropriate to condemn the post rather than acknowledge that it exists and people are happy that it does.
This site is not strictly about programming, it deals with topics of a larger nature. Altho he might not have created a social media site, Ravi Shankar can be considered a revolutionary that had disrupted society for the better. In addition music can be viewed as a form of math and programming.
'Hacker' doesn't only refer to software developers. It has evolved to mean more than that. HN is a community and if a story makes it to the front page the community obviously wants to see it there and finds it interesting/useful.
How would you feel if you saw a post about Erlang or Clojure on a site called "Music News?"

I probably wouldn't be such a cry-baby asshole complainer about it.

Wow, easy there tiger! Diego has a valid point, and while you may disagree with him, personal insults such as this are futile and very unbecoming of an HNer. Please do keep it civil and understand that HN is an open arena for discussions and dissenting viewpoints, that's what makes it interesting and different.
http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is

Specifically:

"The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in."

I hate when a specific question is asked and tersely dismissed with only an abstract quote from an unrelated source that doesn't really apply. It's a trend I have noticed online, and it's such an empty, rude answering style. (I am similarly annoyed by answering a question with a quote from the documentation and nothing else; it smacks of "RTFM", and although sometimes necessary, the attitude is overused.)

esr's definition of hacking doesn't really apply to what is considered on-topic for Hacker News. So, allow me to quote the Hacker News guidelines[1], specifically:

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

I happen to agree, and I think fighting for this piece to be applicable on Hacker News is a waste of time. The trolls slugging on diego for asking the question are worse, because they skipped the guidelines in two respects (the other imploring us to remain civil).

[1]: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sometimes I'm not interested by the articles on HN frontpage. Well ... I don't click on them.
If you don't think a post should be on HN, hit the flag button and a mod will look at it. HN is as good as you want it to be after all.
I already flagged the parent comment, as the typical Hacker News complaining is inappropriate for an obituary thread.
I agree, there's often a time and a place for it.
Flagging actually also works as a massive downgrade of votes. Get a couple of people to flag an article and it will go down 10 places on the front page. So don't use flagging just to "bring it to someone's attention". It's far more powerful, and should be used judiciously...
If it's interesting to the community of hackers who hang out here, then yes it should hit the front page.

Don't worry, in 10 years you'll have forgotten all about this.

Evidently not--Galina Vishnevskaya didn't make it today.
Thank you for all the wonderful music.

My all time favourite Ravi Shankar recording is "Raga Bhupal Todi - Tala Ardha Jaital" off of Ravi Shankar In San Francisco: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TEPBFQ/ref=dm_mu_dp_trk...

huh, norah jones' dad. who knew?
A lot of people actually.
Apparently she is bitterish about her father since he left them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

Seems like she got over it: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwDRbCiFEsPI5A0Z6JE7_g...

Here are some great clips of my Dad playing the Sitar for anyone who never saw him perform live.

He's 51 in the first clip and 92 in the second clip and an inspiration in both. I love you and miss you, Pops.

I was kind of surprised when one of my friends dropped that fact the other day. I always associated Ravi with The Beatles, but I didn't know he actually fathered (in the literal sense) another excellent musician :)
Well, there was also Anoushka, his Grammy-nominated, sitar-playing daughter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoushka_Shankar

I'm sure you meant "is" :-)
Rest In Peace. Silver lining: perhaps Annapurna Devi will start playing publicly now.
RIP Ravi. he was the first Indian musician I really got into.
He lived a full and beautiful life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOi45THGJdQ

That's saddening, I love Shankar's music and am always going to think of him as the greatest sitarist to ever live. RIP.
Crazy - a bunch of deadpoolers picked him: http://stiffs.com/celebrity/ravishankar/