Anoushka Shankar

Sitar player Anoushka Shankar has spent her career incorporating the heady melodies and open-ended structures of classical Indian raga into genres as varied as flamenco, jazz, and electronic music. Shankar was born in London in June 1981, and she was just seven years old when she began her musical training with her father—the world-famous sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. Within a few years she was accompanying her father during concerts, and at age 13 she was confident enough on the sitar that she could hold her own alongside tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain in her debut solo live performance in New Delhi. In 1999 Shankar graduated with honors from her high school in Encinitas, CA (where her father settled in his later years), and then she launched headfirst into a career as a solo recording and touring artist—earning her first of many Grammy nominations for 2001’s Live at Carnegie Hall. That album and several others find Shankar focusing on soulful interpretations of traditional Indian music, but over the years she has also traversed genres in tasteful ways with help from artists including Herbie Hancock, M.I.A., and Shankar’s half sister, Norah Jones.