Live: Ravi Shankar at the Monterey International Pop Festival

Background

Ravi Shankar's appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival marked a highpoint in the popularity of Indian classical music in the West, during a period when rock groups such as the Beatles, the Byrds and the Rolling Stones had increasingly adopted aspects of the genre in their work. Adding to Shankar's own standing among Western youth, he had achieved fame for his role as sitar teacher to George Harrison, the Beatles' lead guitarist. Having moved to California in February 1967 due to the demand for his concerts in the United States, the festival was Shankar's first performance at a rock event, as well as the first event to combine the diverse elements of contemporary popular music in a festival setting.

Shankar admired the artistry and musicianship of some of his fellow performers on the three-day program, particularly Simon & Garfunkel, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding. He was appalled, however, at the sight of Hendrix setting fire to his electric guitar, and by the Who's destruction of their instruments at the end of their set. As a result, Shankar initially refused to take the stage. He was placated once the organisers rescheduled his set for the final day, a Sunday, when no other acts would be playing.

Performance

In addition to Rakha on tabla, Shankar was accompanied by tambura player Kamala Chakravarty, his partner at the time. Author Peter Lavezzoli writes of the reception the Indian musicians received: "Shankar gave what he considered to be one of his best performances, and the response of the audience was ecstatic, further catapulting Shankar to stardom." Noting that most of the festival's Western performers were among the crowd also, Lavezzolli describes the Indian music portion as Shankar's "Monterey coup d'etat".

Part of the set was included in the 1968 documentary film Monterey Pop, directed by D.A. Pennebaker. Writing in The Guardian in 2011, Caspar Llewellyn Smith said that the festival was in some ways "of even greater lasting significance" than the larger Woodstock Festival of 1969, adding that Shankar's performance "demonstrat[ed] where the Byrds and the Beatles had recently picked up influences".

Release and reception

In the United States, Billboard magazine's reviewer predicted that Live: Ravi Shankar at the Monterey International Pop Festival would become Shankar's "best seller to date", given his popularity over the past year. The album duly climbed to number 43 on the national Top LP's listings (later the Billboard 200), the highest placing Shankar ever achieved on that chart, and reached number 20 on the same magazine's Jazz Albums list. This success coincided with Shankar's continued run at number 1 on Billboard's Best Selling Classical LP's, with West Meets East; in addition, the magazine honoured him as its Artist of the Year for 1967, the first time that an Indian musician had received such an award.

Live: Ravi Shankar at the Monterey International Pop Festival was issued on CD in October 1998, on EMI's Angel label. AllMusic's reviewer admires the performance as "finely wrought, intense and hypnotic, and melodically rich". In 2012, Rolling Stone critic David Fricke included the live album among the five best recordings from Shankar's career, writing:

One of the most explosive moments in D.A. Pennenbaker's film, Monterey Pop, comes after [segments featuring] the Who and Jimi Hendrix: the excerpt from Shankar's elegant and blazing Sunday-afternoon set and the sudden, volcanic applause at the end, by a truly stunned audience. There are many live Shankar albums from the Sixties and early Seventies; this one preserves a generous portion of an extraordinary moment in his life – and rock's expanding consciousness.

Anastasia Tsioulcas of NPR Music included it on a similar list and highlighted the synergy between Shankar and Rakha, whose "memorable solo in ektal (a 12-beat rhythmic cycle)" she cited as evidence of "a profound and exciting partnership between equals".

Track listing

All selections traditional, adapted by Ravi Shankar.

1. "Raga Bhimpalasi" – 27:30

2. "Tabla Solo in Ektal" – 6:15
3. "Dhun (Dadra and Fast Teental)" – 19:25

Personnel