A meeting with Ravi Shankar

From my series on “Musical Meetings”

I was staying with Ed Pearl in West LA while my band The Scragg Family was playing the Ash Grove this was in the early 1960s. As I sipped my morning coffee Ed asked me, “Peter, what are you doing this morning?” I said that I hadn’t decided on my schedule yet. He replied “How would you like to meet Ravi Shankar?” I told him I had heard the name, but was not very familiar with the music. He said “I am taking Ravi for a series of radio interviews to promote his upcoming concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium this Saturday. Why don’t you come along?”

Ravi Shankar with sitar. Publicity photo 1964.

So I climbed into Ed’s battered green Mercedes convertible and we drove off to a hotel in Hollywood to pick up Ravi. He was already standing in the street in front of the hotel along with Allah Rakha his tabla player. The three of us climbed into the back seat of Ed’s car, and he proceeded to drive to a series of radio stations for the interviews. So I had Ravi on one side and Ala Rakha on the other as they attempted to fill me in very briefly on the story of Hindustani music.

The ShuddhSwarTable of Hindustani Music

Ravi had brought along a couple of 45 RPM records with music samples. Each of the interviews followed a similar pattern. The DJ or announcer that was conducting the interview was at first very hyper, filled with words. Ravi listened patiently for a while and then launched into his explanations about the music. By the end of each interview the DJ was more or less sitting in a silent, dazed attitude, while Ravi held forth on many of the aspects of the music. It was a wonderful experience. We took most of the day to visit five or six stations to broadcast these interviews. As they climbed out of Ed’s Car in front of their hotel Ravi turned to me and said: “Of course you’ll be coming to our concert on Saturday night!” I replied that unfortunately I could not attend that concert because my own band was performing at the Ash Grove nightclub on Melrose Street. Ravi then said, “You will have to come then, to our private concert in a home in the Hills above UCLA!” He then gave me directions to where the concert was being held.

Ad for Ravi Shankar and The Scragg Family

That Sunday afternoon I drove up in the hills to the home where the concert took place. Walking through a shaded garden. I was led into a large living room which had a low platform stage set in one corner perhaps 12 by 8 feet in size. The stage was covered with several layers of Persian carpets on which were laid some pillows, two vases with bouquets of flowers, and two bowls of incense, whose smoke rose slowly into the still air of the room. The room soon filled with between 50 and 60 people, most of whom were of East Indian nationality. The musicians filed into the room and settled behind their instruments, seated on cushions with Pandit Shankar in the center of the stage. I must have been at most 10 ft from the stage and very attentive to what was happening.

Very few words were said before the music began. The setting was very beautiful that afternoon as the late afternoon sun shone through the windows of the home, filtered by hanging branches of eucalyptus trees, whose long narrow leaves formed moving patterns across the oriental rugs. It was as if someone had arranged a light show to accompany the music! I was enthralled. The performance lasted almost three hours. I thanked the musicians and my hosts for being allowed to witness this experience. Later I kept in touch with Pandit Shankar over the next years. When I opened my own music Club in 1971, the Bluebird Café, my contacts with Ravi included the name of his friend and student Amya Das Gupta who was managing the Ravi Shankar School of Music in Los Angeles. Amya was persuaded to come up and give a performance on the sitar along with his wife and another friend.

So we arranged a concert of Hindustani music at the Bluebird under very special conditions. Tickets were sold only in advance and covered the cost of admission, plus an authentic North Indian dinner which Amya and his wife cooked at our Café 2 hours before the start of the concert. People were asked to show up on time and we then shut the front door, hanging a “closed” sign in front. We also took the phone off the hook and disconnected the cash register so that everyone could focus on the music. The concert then took place to the delight of everyone there. We then moved the tables of the café to form one long dining table and the Indian dinner was served, concluding the evening. I have always maintained that music is a form of food; that music and food therefore should be presented together.