Ananda Shankar was a Bengali musician whose inventive combination of traditional Indian sounds with rock and funk led to work in London and Los Angeles with rock stars such as Jimi Hendrix. His several concept albums included tributes to Elvis Presley as well as explorations of Hindustani folk. Nephew of famed sitar player Ravi Shankar, his parents were noted dancers and he grew up influenced by both Western and Eastern music.
After studying the sitar at Binaras Hindu University, he traveled west and in 1970 made his recording debut on Reprise Records with sitar versions of songs by rock bands such as The Doors and The Rolling Stones. He returned to India where he made several albums including 'India Remembers Elvis' (1977), 'A Musical Discovery of India' (1978), 'Sá-Re-Gá Machán' (1981), 'Temptations' (1992), and 'Ananda' (1999).
In 1996, after two of his tracks - 'Dancing Drums' and 'Streets of Calcutta' - appeared on a compilation album titled 'Blue Juice Squeeze', he joined Peter Gabriel's Womad Festival. A resulting album, 'Walking On', was released in 2000 following Shankar's death from cardiac failure at the age of 56. In its obituary, the Guardian newspaper called him "a master of fusion music with his bold and uninhibited experiments in Indian and western musical forms". An album titled 'Ananda Shankar: A Life in Music' was released in 2006.
