Toward the Infinite: Anoushka Shankar on Creativity, Spirituality, and Sound Worlds at Newport

For most people, few instruments are as distinctly identifiable with Hindustani classical music as the sitar. The instrument serves as a narrator on many of the most important ragas – the foundational melodic framework for improvisation and composition in Indian classical music – from the serenity of the Raga Yaman to the tempestuous Raga Miya Ki Malhar.  Indeed, it would be difficult to envision Hindustani classical music without the instrument. But the history of the instrument goes beyond India’s borders. Its origins are generally traced to the meeting of Central Asian long-necked lutes brought by Persian soldiers and existing droning instruments. The name itself is also believed to have come from the Persian word “sehtar,” meaning “three-stringed.” And some legends – though history seems to rebut it – claim it was first developed by Amir Khusrau, a thirteenth-century Sufi poet. And so, as central as the sitar is to Hindustani classical music, it is also an instrument of cross-cultural communication. A tool that reaches far beyond tradition and boxes even while learning and borrowing from them. Few understand this beautiful nature of the sitar like Anoushka Shankar.

As to tradition, Anoushka Shankar continually shows an appreciation and recognition of where she comes from. Often in Western discussions of music, there arises a concept of a lineage. We speak freely of trumpeters who emerged in the school of Miles Davis or pianists who are in the tradition of Bud Powell, for instance. But such discipleship is hardly as structured as the gharanas, hereditary lineages, common in Hindustani classical music. Anoushka Shankar’s origins lie in the Maihar Gharana, a tradition that started with Allauddin Khan, who brought to the instrument influences from other string instruments like the veena, rabab, sursringar, and surbahar. He also brought his teachings to his disciples, most notably Ravi Shankar who in turn carried the sounds of the tradition worldwide, shaping several Western artists including Phillip Glass and George Harrison. Ravi’s disciple and daughter, Anoushka, has ventured further still in taking the sitar to sonic realms it has never previously encountered. In so doing, given Maihar’s broad scope, some can certainly see this as a natural development from those that came before.

But in another sense, in adopting such widely diverse sounds into her music, Anoushka Shankar’s work has also been radical. She has actively pushed for the Western perception of the sitar to be moved beyond some exoticized voice or to serve as a callback to some of its use in prior generations. This is neither to disrespect the artistic family tree from which she has sprouted but rather to more fully express both the capacity of her instrument of choice and her own unique origins. Growing up, her time was split between London, Delhi, and California, making her experiences inevitably culturally and socially different from those who came before. Not reflecting those influences in her own music would cheapen her art. And so, what one sees when looking at her discography is a beginning with albums Anoushka (Angel, 1998) and Anourag (Angel, 2000) that hewed a bit more conventionally. Starting with Rise (Angel, 2005), she then spent the next decade exploring where those edges of Indian classical music intersect with jazz, electronic music, and even flamenco. These albums were gorgeous listening experiences but also somewhat stylistically siloed. Even in the midst of a beautiful tapestry, you could identify the seams where cultures and styles were sewn together.

Land of Gold (Deutsche Grammophon, 2016) drastically changed Shankar’s approach. A frequent collaborator with both the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Choose Love, of which she is now an official Ambassador, Shankar was exposed to the images of humanitarian crises across the world. These heart-wrenching visions lie at the heart of Land of Gold more than specific stylistic overtures. The anguish of human suffering. The brightness of hope. The yearning for a better tomorrow. All of those things transcend culture, people, place, and even sound itself. In addressing these broader human elements, Shankar crafted her own sound worlds, places that remain faithful to her upbringing while speaking to souls the world over. While her father helped bring East to West, Anoushka has sought to erase the lines between people altogether.

Her latest work, the Chapters series, goes yet further. Born out of a diary entry she scribbled of “Three chapters, three geographies,” each issue reflects a place that played a significant role in her upbringing. Chapter I: Forever, For Now (LEITER, 2023) represents her birth and upbringing in London through incorporating stark minimalist aesthetics. Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dawn (LEITER, 2024) mirrors her fifteen years in California, with heavy electronic manipulations evocative of the vastness of the coast. And the joyfully danceable Chapter III: We Return to Light (LEITER, 2024) returns her to Goa, India, where she spent her twenties finding creative renewal. The textures of each issue reflect the locales they honor. While emphasizing different elements, each sounds coherently connected. A cynic would note that the way they interlock merely reflects the fact that the same artist is behind all three. More compelling, however, is how it mirrors her own perception that each of us in this world – without minimizing our heritage or culture – has more in common than we perceive. Like the sitar itself, we are all a meeting of people.

With an artist like Shankar, there are many routes for dialogue. Some get too mired in her roots. Others focus solely on her own prior works. After all, her credentials are impressive. She has not only thirteen Grammy nominations to her credit but was also the first Indian woman ever nominated for any and the first Indian musician to perform live at the Grammys. She is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music. The youngest and first female recipient of a British House of Commons Shield. The recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from Oxford University. And she is about to add one more: arguably the first sitarist to ever perform at the legendary Newport Jazz Festival as a bandleader. But in our conversation, we wished to go a different route and try to get a better understanding of the person and artistic mind and spirit behind it all.

PostGenre: Do you remember the first time you ever learned about the Newport Jazz Festival?

Anoushka Shankar: No. It feels like the name has always been around. There are a handful of festivals around the world which have been referenced in so many ways – whether it is someone saying “oh my god, I’m getting to play here” or the legendary performances from there – and Newport is one of them. I’m excited to be performing there.

PG: And you will be presenting music from your Chapters series?

AS: That’s right.

PG: With the series, you create sound worlds. Some of your earlier music – Traveller (Deutsche Grammophon, 2011) explored flamenco, and Breathing Under Water (Blue Note, 2007) visited electronic music, to name two – but it feels like these sound worlds are much more organic and expansive and less focused on a meeting of specific genres.

AS: You’re exactly right. As you said, my journey went through earlier crossover explorations where leaving a genre of music meant meeting other genres of music and exploring where they met. Now that I have been touring for thirty years and making non-classical and more exploratory records for twenty years, I feel like there’s been an evolution.

I think Land of Gold (Deutsche Grammophon, 2016) was a bit of a turning point where I stopped thinking in terms of the genres and focused on what sounds we are working with. I focused more on questions like: What is the narrative here? What is the emotional arc? What is the truth? And how do I tell that with music? I became comfortable making music that isn’t easily definable, accepting that I was never going to fit neatly into an easy box. I thought a lot more fluidly about music. I think I approached Love Letters (Decca, 2020) the same way; I focused on making music that had to tell the story, whatever the sounds were going to be. So, by the time I got to Chapters, I had a bit more experience with that.

PG: Is it more difficult to create those sound worlds at a large outdoor gathering like Newport compared to in the studio?

AS: How they translate live comes down to things like who the musicians are with me on stage. There is a lot of building of the music behind the scenes. For me, the most important thing is who inspires me. Who can I be on stage with that inspires me and brings their own soul into my music when they play?

I had created this particular band back before I had even written Chapter 1. I just knew that these guys would be incredibly fluid and variable on stage. They are all very soulful musicians who also have incredibly open brains. Creating those sound worlds live is not a problem.  

PG: You said a little earlier that Land of Gold was a transition point for you musically. That was also the album where you started to incorporate pedals and looping sitar lines. It is really fascinating to hear you – especially after working with so many orchestras over the years – essentially create an orchestra of yourself.

AS: I found it very creatively exciting and liberating to start looking at pedalboards and things around the time I was working on Land of Gold for exactly that reason. As a composer, I can have a breadth to what I’m thinking about when I’m writing music. But as an instrumentalist, I play a linear, melody-based instrument and am, by myself, only ever one voice. That is beautiful. But to be able to suddenly explore what it means to broaden and create textures, to create palettes and layers, and to simply sound different was very freeing and exciting. So, my work with pedals is very much a part of my growth.

But earlier I meant more that with Land of Gold, there was something emotionally important that led every choice on the album. That is what led me to ask where the integrity is. The integrity is in what’s the emotion? What’s the story? What’s the truth? It’s not what’s the genre? The focus is more on what instruments we would use and what we need to tell the story.

PG: Back when you were a teenager, you had serious stage fright. Do you feel part of your transition and growth away from genres is also, to some degree, a reflection of your developing an increased confidence as you continue to develop and perform?

AS: I’m seeing a lot of that through a new lens compared to what I once did. In the last couple of years, I’ve discovered my own neurodivergence and diagnoses. From that, there’s a lot that looks different in my own story now. What I would have answered you with a few years ago may have been different.

My stage fright was huge, but it was more like a life fright. I would feel the same when walking into a room, whenever I didn’t have a map of what was about to happen, who I was meant to be, or what I was meant to say. Or, on stage, how I was meant to present myself. It was all paralytically frightening to me.

When I look at it through the lens of knowing about my neurodivergence, the creation of my own sound world also makes sense. A lot of people who are neurodivergent find that working for yourself can be easier than working in a very structured office. You can go at your own pace, taking both your creative bursts and your slow days. It’s almost like I’ve created my own sound world as a place where I can more fully be comfortable being who I am. I get to truthfully be myself on stage instead of feeling like I need to be or do something a certain way. I think I found a way to create a space that feels authentic and comfortable.

PG: It must have taken a lot of work to find and create that space. How much of that work is tied to the instrument itself? Most people restrict their concept of the sitar to only Indian classical music. Why do you think many people, at least in the West, limit their perception of the sitar, and has it been difficult for you to break away from those expectations?

AS: I’m still fighting that. My fight for the broader capacity of the sitar is not done. My parallel is always to speak in terms of Western instruments, which obviously have more presence and history in this part of the world. We don’t think of a single genre when we consider the piano or the guitar. People accept the piano as a medium for accessing any number of genres and styles of music. The sitar, by contrast, is far too often synonymous with a specific style, or in many cases, a cultural touchpoint. I think the limited focus most people in the West have on the sitar comes because it’s from another part of the world. There is a broad brush stroke through which people understand the instrument and where it comes from.

But I also think the sitar has come into people’s consciousness in such seminal ways that it’s hard to get past those elements. People’s memories of the sitar are still weighted toward the 1960s, for example. Of course, in my musical and family history, that period is an amazing point. It was a global breakthrough for my father’s sound, the instrument, and culture. And yet that, in its own way, became minimized into itself. A lot of people can’t hear the sitar without thinking of psychedelia or the ’60s, incense, meditation, the Beatles, or whatever that reference point may be. And that’s always something I have to fight with because I see the sitar as coming from this incredibly beautiful tradition, one that I also lean into and come from. But the instrument is capable of so many things, and trying to reveal those things to people is still very much something I’m actively doing.

PG: Do you feel it may be a little more difficult for you, compared to another sitar player, to move people away from the music they stereotypically associate with the sitar because of who your dad was and his legacy?

AS: No, certainly not anymore. Any disadvantage in those regards is also always offset by the fact that my name is recognizable. It’s easier to get in the door because of who my father is.

But I do wish that with a thirty-plus year career of creating music, my parents’ names would not be in the first paragraph of everything written about me. To be a woman in my forties and, so often, have sixty to seventy percent of the interview be “What was it like being your father’s daughter? Did you feel pressure?” is frustrating. With respect, I understand the curiosity, but those are the same questions I was getting when I was thirteen. How about we talk about all the rest now?

For better or worse, I have always had so much respect for my father, my musical history, and what I was given that I never did what some other people do. I never overtly shut the door on that or have said that talking about him is a no-go. I embrace that history and my family, but too often it becomes the most important thing to some people. So no, I don’t think it’s harder to reach spaces, but I do think that sometimes what I do is less seen for itself.

PG: It seems to be a fine line between honoring lineage and being seen for yourself. To some extent, it is a parallel experience to Ravi Coltrane’s – coincidentally named after your father – and how he leads his own career but also contends with how his father, John, was a legend on the same instrument.

AS: I was just thinking of that.

PG: You don’t want to ignore the father’s contributions – doing so would be disrespectful – but you also are your own artist with your own ideas. One thing that differentiates you from Ravi, however, is that you also collaborated with your father. Do you feel there’s anything he taught you that shapes how you approach the sitar outside of the stereotypical spaces it’s been used in, maybe even outside of where he went musically?

AS: That’s very difficult to answer because his influence on me is immense. He taught me from the ground up on the instrument. It all kind of came through him. But for me, the biggest lesson was always his own practice and his own approach to music. I learned from him, but I also got to sit and just be there. I think watching one of the greats in their own personal approach to their craft itself teaches you so much.

The big takeaway I’m trying to get to, however, is that he forever remained curious, a student, and exploratory. He never flipped over into some other space of “I’ve done that now” or “I got it all now.” Being next to the person everyone is treating as the pinnacle and who’s saying “I can see so much more than where I am,” for me, as a young person, that showed me music as a spiritual path in a universal way. It is infinite, and that was by far and away the biggest lesson ever.

PG: So you do see music-making as a spiritual act?

AS: I see it as a spiritual act in the same way that for someone else, pottery is a spiritual act, or glassmaking is a spiritual act. I think human creativity itself is inherently spiritual. I think we connect to that most uplifted, beautiful part of ourselves through contributing to the world, whatever our gift is. And we all have our own unique gifts. It is such a beautiful feeling when we get into that flow state, when we start to feel like something is making with us, because it’s fundamentally spiritual, but not in an exclusive way. I think the spirituality of creativity is available to all of us in different and beautiful ways.

PG: Tying to art as a form of spiritual expression and going back to John Coltrane for a moment, you have said that for your Chapters series, you started with a blank slate and allowed the process to go freely. Do you see a parallel between – despite producing different sound environments – that approach and what people like Coltrane have done in avant-garde jazz with free improvisation?

AS: I think there’s a reason my dad was embraced by the jazz world in the 1950s, a whole decade before he exploded onto public consciousness. The improvisatory energy of being connected to something and just letting yourself follow it runs parallel between jazz and Indian classical music. As you said, they’re not the same. The way we approach the notes we’re choosing and the framework we’re improvising within is completely different. But there is an energy there that feels recognizable in both.

PG: In terms of your own compositions, what is your process for writing when starting with that blank space? How do the pieces come together?

AS: Most of the time it’s just me and a sitar. Sometimes I’ll use a piano or keyboard when I write, but that’s more likely when I’m already at the stage where I’m writing for a group of sounds and instruments or commissioned by other people. Maybe I need to hear an idea in a cello sound, for instance, while I’m thinking of it. The piano can help with that. But my main comfort is through the sitar, even if what I am writing is ultimately a part for someone else.

I come up with melodies and trust them to work. I feel like sometimes things can be a lot simpler than we think they are. I used to think, “Oh, I’m composing. How do I get to the line? What’s the next part?” But now I prefer to create a really simple melody or a couple of notes and go with it. When I do, it feels a lot easier, and things flow more smoothly.  Being a “yes” person rather than a “no” person feels very important in that phase.

PG: You have to remain open to the sounds that come naturally to you. Those artistic influences would seem to come from outside music as well. In addition to music, you have written and acted. Do you see a connection between those roles and your music-making?

AS: One hundred percent. It’s all creative play, right? We all see our kids and go, “When did we lose that”, right? In art, you don’t have to lose that. You have to be playful and have to put yourself out there in weird ways. You remain playful.

I think acting is like being a musician in an orchestra where you’re playing something off the page. You have to bring yourself into the material and interpret it. Writing is a bit more like composing. Obviously, there are variables, but I recognize the feeling of flow across all of those things.

PG: You somewhat answered this earlier when we were talking about how your approach to music has changed over the last thirty years, but how do you feel your relationship to music in general has changed the most over that period?

AS: I think I trust myself a bit more now. I trust that I am a musician and music feels a bit more like my own. That is hard to explain, and I wonder about this sometimes too.

But if we think of a classical violinist, for example, there are many maestros who have never composed a note in their lives, but are the most cherished performers of that decade or century. Their whole career is based around performance. I don’t feel like that is me. It’s hard to analyze because I don’t have other experiences to compare it to, but when I was playing before I was writing, I felt like something was missing. It felt like there was a distance between me and the music. It felt lovely to play, it really did, but it also felt like something was missing. I could see something in other people around me that I felt like I didn’t have.

I think I needed to write music. I feel like in my years of writing more and getting closer to the relationship of being a composer, I found my real connection with music. And, paradoxically, that then made me feel closer to my instrument. I can speak through it more.

PG: So, do you feel a little more detached – though perhaps that is not the right word to use – from the instrument when you are performing something you did not compose? For instance, when you were on Saturday Night Live with Gorillaz and Black Thought earlier this year.

AS: That’s such a good question. But the answer is no. When I am performing someone else’s music for only a certain amount of my time, I think stepping into collaboration is stepping into other people’s worlds. And when you do that – and I don’t use this word lightly – it is fun. It’s enjoyable. It’s pleasurable. I get to play something very different and almost get to try something in a way, as a different character. I deeply enjoy that. But if that were my whole career, it might not feel the same.

PG: Playing your own music also allows you, musically, to more readily address the causes you support. You have been an advocate for women’s rights, refugee rights, children’s rights, animal rights, and other social issues. Where do you see the role of music in making the world a better place, and is that something you actively keep in mind anytime you create?

AS: I think the way the world is now, it’s very easy to become disconnected from a sense of empathy. It can truly floor me the levels to which people can fall when things are so disconnected through the funnels of computers and keyboards. By the time a picture of some kind of human devastation reaches you, you see people commenting under it with something utterly detached from human experience.

I feel like art – not just music, but all forms of art – is able to bypass a lot of intellect and thought formations and go directly to feeling. I feel like anytime you really sit and watch a movie that moves you, hear a piece of music that makes you cry, or see visual art that stirs something in you, you’re reconnecting with a really powerful part of yourself that our world doesn’t encourage us to connect with very often. That is the place where compassion, care, and an identification that we’re all the same come from.

So, without being lofty, I do think that music – not exclusively music, but all forms of art – is beyond essential. We need it because everything else in our world is geared toward productivity, success, numbers, and survival. [Art] is where it’s about the human spirit. Someone is pouring out a piece of their soul into a creation, and we resonate with that when we experience it. I think resonance is a really beautiful word. When we’re vibrating in something, there’s something special happening, and I think we recognize that. With art, you feel like you get to be alive properly again.

Enter Anoushka Shankar’s sound worlds on July 31, 2026 at the Newport Jazz Festival. You can read more about the Festival here. Stay tuned as we continue our extensive pre-coverage of the event. We will also be providing live coverage from Fort Adams. More information about Anoushka Shankar is available on her website.  You can purchase all three of her ‘Chapters’ on Bandcamp.

Photo credit: Laura Lewis