Pop in the Name of Love : For Ravi Shankar, Even the ‘60s Were Just Another Chance to Give Indian Music to the World

It’s that time of life for Ravi Shankar.

A four-CD box set overview on Angel Records, “In Celebration,” co-produced by longtime friend George Harrison, was released last year to coincide with the sitar player’s 75th birthday. Shankar’s autobiography, “Raga Mala” (Garland of Ragas), is due for spring publication. And as if his music could get any more spiritual, next up is a recording based on prayers and old chants of his native India.

“Hardly any sitar in it,” said Shankar, speaking by phone from his home in Encinitas. “I am the composer.” Surprising only in that Shankar is as universally identified with sitar playing as, say, Pavarotti is with opera singing.

“Lots of choir, religious singing with a very universal appeal,” Shankar said of the project, tentatively titled “Mangalam” and just completed in sessions in India and at Harrison’s studios in London. “Definitely not pop or new age . . . maybe you’ll find it in the spiritual music [bins], like the chantings of the Sistine Chapel.”

You’ll find Shankar, playing sitar and in a more familiar format of classical Indian ragas, at Irvine Barclay Theatre on Friday. His concert is the first on a new world-music series presented jointly by the theater and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

The series also features Cajun band Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys (Jan. 25); Norwegian singer Lynni Treekrem with mariachi band Los Camperos de Nati Cano (March 1); South Africa’s Ladysmith Black Mambazo (March 15); Ireland’s Chieftains (at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, March 20); and La Tania and her flamenco troupe (May 10).

It’s fitting that the series begins with Shankar, whom Harrison has called the “godfather of world music.” Violinist/conductor Yehudi Menuhin has compared Shankar’s genius to Mozart’s and included him alongside composers Georges Enesco and Bela Bartok as the finest musicians he has known; Shankar and Menuhin together won a Grammy for best chamber music performance for the first volume of “West Meets East.”

That Grammy came almost 30 years ago. The ‘60s. The Beatles. The sitar explosion.

Though Shankar’s instrumental prowess had been well established internationally before he met George Harrison in 1966, their meeting launched Indian music and culture into the forefront of pop consciousness in the West.

The classically oriented Shankar suddenly found himself a hippie idol. He played the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock and helped inspire the Concerts for Bangladesh benefits (for which earned Shankar a second Grammy, for best album, in 1972).

Recalled Shankar: “All the young people got interested . . . but it was so mixed up with superficiality and the fad and the drugs, unfortunately I had to go through several years to make them understand that this is a disciplined music, needing a fresh mind. Now I have a fantastic audience that really understands the spirit of this music. . . .

“I didn’t want to sell out the music, become the raga-rock king, or a swami. It got all mixed up with karma, yoga, hashish and so on. . . . I didn’t take advantage and become a multi-multimillionaire. I had only a strong urge to give our music the platform it deserves. When it has that, I am happy and humble at the same time.”

Shankar has influenced artists as diverse as jazz legend John Coltrane, flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, composer Philip Glass and conductor Zubin Mehta, with whom Shankar toured one of two sitar concertos he has written.

In concert, Shankar generally is accompanied by a tabla player, in this case Bikram Ghosh from Calcutta, and by one of his sitar students, in this case his daughter, Anoushka, 15. “She is also my disciple,” he said.

His assessment of his disciple?

“As a sitar player, and belonging to the old school, the system of oral tradition, from that point of view, I expect very much from her,” Shankar said. “She is very deserving, extremely talented.”

As for what the musicians will play here, that’s anybody’s guess.

“I will decide maybe the same morning, or the same evening,” he said. “We follow a system of ‘timely’ ragas. There is a lot of choice in that.” He’ll choose two or three ragas appropriate for late afternoon or evening performance. “Season, mood--everything affects the choice. Place also.

“In San Francisco or Los Angeles or Delhi or London, a large number of people are already initiated. Naturally we choose something new or something more complex.”

Shankar heads from the Irvine Barclay to Carnegie Hall.

“I haven’t planned that [program] either, but it is bound to be something more complex,” he said. “I have played God-knows-how-many times, 80 or 90 in New York, at least 20 or 25 times at Carnegie Hall over the last 40 years.”

Shankar devotes a number of rooms in his home to various aspects of music. He took the call from the piano room, where Anoushka practices that instrument as well as sitar. There is also Shankar’s own music room; a much larger room for performances; and a room reserved exclusively for sitar instruction, where Shankar sees “special” students from India and from Los Angeles. (“I don’t take money for teaching, never,” he said.)

Shankar believes he has found a piece of heaven near San Diego.

“We live about 3 1/2 miles from the coast, on a beautiful hill, what we would call a hill station in India,” he said. “It’s like an ashram, really.”

Sitarist Ravi Shankar plays classical Indian ragas Friday at Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. 8 p.m. Sold out. Presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and the Irvine Barclay. (714) 553-2422.