Music Reviews : Shankar Brings East to West in Pasadena

Even for the adventurous Western classical music listener, Ravi Shankar can be a stretch, but stretch that listener must, for he can’t all of a sudden grow Eastern ears.

The renowned Indian sitarist, now 74, came to a packed Sexson Auditorium at Pasadena City College Sunday night for a joyful program of evening ragas (he had offered morning ragas earlier in the day), and his music proved as challenging as our own avant-garde.

This was chiefly, though certainly not entirely, because of its length. After a brief preliminary by some other musicians, Shankar started the first piece at about 7:20 and the music continued virtually nonstop, except for tuning, until 9:32, when he finished the second piece.

The best analogy for what went on, though Shankar would probably dispute it, is a jam session, and for one listener the most remarkable feature of the first raga, “Jaitashree,” was Shankar’s opening improvisation with the material, which lasted some 40 minutes alone.

With drones, played by the tanpura, buzzing in the background, and assisted by sitarist Kartik Seshadri, Shankar seemed in no hurry to take the raga anywhere, playing with two or three notes--bending them, sustaining them, creating dissonances pregnantly resolved to the tonic--for considerable lengths, and even stopping periodically to retune. But eventually, almost by misdirection, he reached great heights, as if only by mulling everything over from different angles could he get there.

The second raga, “Pilu,” impressed with its rhythmic groove, at first a plump medium tempo, in which Shankar and tabla (hand drums) master Swapan Chaudhuri made much of the rhythmic tension and release inherent to this music, and then at a much faster tempo where flying virtuosity took over.

The audience, a mixture of Indians, old, ex- and current hippies (including George Harrison), greeted Shankar with reverence and sent him off like a rock star.