7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7

the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, and the following

year he received his first Grammy Award, for Pete (1996).

In 2009 he won a second Grammy, for a collection that

found the artist approaching his 90th birthday with undi-

minished spirit and hope. Seeger’s “musical autobiography”

Where Have All the Flowers Gone was published in 1996.

Ravi Shankar

(b. April 7, 1920, Benares [now Varanasi], India)

I

ndian musician, player of the sitar, composer, and

founder of the National Orchestra of India, Ravi

Shankar was influential in stimulating Western apprecia-

tion of Indian music.

Born into a Bengali Brahman (highest caste in Hindu

tradition) family, Shankar spent most of his youth study-

ing music and dance and touring extensively in India and

Europe with his brother Uday’s dance troupe. At age 18

Shankar gave up dancing, and for the next seven years he

studied the sitar (a long-necked stringed instrument of the

lute family) under the noted musician Ustad Allauddin

Khan. After serving as music director of All-India Radio

from 1948 until 1956, he began a series of European and

American tours.

In the course of his long career, Shankar became the

world’s best-known exponent of Hindustani (North

Indian) classical music, performing with India’s most dis-

tinguished percussionists and making dozens of successful

recordings. He composed the film scores for the Indian

director Satyajit Ray’s famous Apu trilogy (1955–59). In 1962

Shankar founded the Kinnara School of Music in Bombay

(now Mumbai) and then established a second Kinnara

School in Los Angeles in 1967; he closed both schools some

years later, however, having become disenchanted with

institutional teaching.