Music Without Boundaries
Anoushka Shankar, the now 26-year-old daughter of sitar master Ravi Shankar, has been sharing her intoxicating talents with the world for half her life. Unlike Anoushka’s music—which had always stayed neatly within the confines of the traditional classical Indian genre—Anoushka has always lived a borderless life. It seemed inevitable that her music would follow, and finally it has! After teaming up with eclectic musician Karsh Kale and strategically integrating the talents of a host of other well-known Western and Eastern artists and musicians (namely, Sting, her half-sister Norah Jones and her father Ravi Shankar), Anoushka delivers Breathing Under Water this summer.
Breathing Under Water is a musical journey around the world of sorts, conveying the exhilarating moments of travel along with the inevitable emotions of longing, self-reflection and the feeling of being in-between, not quite knowing where you belong. Anoushka’s sitar playing is the thread that holds the album together, while Karsh’s guitars, keyboards, tabla and singing lay the foundational canvas that the guest vocalists and instrumentalists paint on. If it is possible to have an abstract autobiographical genre, then that is just what Breathing Under Water belongs to, for both Anoushka and Karsh.
“This was really about my own maturation. The main impetus was to create a record without any boundaries. I wanted to be as free as I possibly could be and, of course, have fun and make a record,” Anoushka says, explaining her first fusion project. “The older I get, the more I want my art to reflect me. It has to be personal. When you’re younger, you want to learn and absorb; as you grow you want to (maintain the integrity of the music and) make it your own, using your own creativity. “We (Karsh, Producer Gaurav___ and I) started working on the album when I was turning 21, 22 years old—the time in life where I was really opening up as a person, as a woman. My life is an inspiration of three continents, three countries, and the album reflects that.”
Ask either artist what led them to a joint project and they will tell you it was the desire to work together. Four years ago, when Anoushka and Karsh crossed paths, they realized that in spite of their very different musical backgrounds, in many respects they led parallel lives. Both Anoushka and Karsh were born in the U.K., primarily raised in the U.S. by Indian parents and took frequent trips to India and to other countries to share their talents. Each of them was intimately acquainted with the mixed bag of emotions that comes along with traveling the world: the serendipity of new experiences, the inevitable introspection that accompanies travel and the sadness that comes along with missing someone or something.
“We’d known each other for four years. We’d been in and around the same music scene in India,” says Karsh. “Anoushka’s record Rise and mine, Broken English, were coming out. We started working on one track and that transitioned into a record. We both realized how many different things we brought to the table. Working together let us spread our wings in different directions, cross over into each other’s territory.”
In deciding how to shape the album, the dynamic duo gave themselves free reins but agreed upon the theme of —travel and transition—something both Anoushka and Karsh were all too familiar with. “I’d been touring since I was 13. I remember always feeling a little sad and a little happy no matter where I was, the feeling of always missing people no matter where I was,” Anoushka says.
“Traveling is one thing that’s very common to our music (and our lives),” Karsh adds. “(We made the album) going from New York to California, to Delhi to Bombay and back to Delhi. This is where the water theme comes in…a lot of these songs are literally about being a traveler at sea.”
The featured vocalists and musicians are also significant to Anoushka and Karsh. Each of the individual artists brings in a slightly different style, a different genre, all tied together by Anoushka’s background as a sitarist. Collectively, the artists on the album are representations of Anoushka and Karsh—of their inspirations, influences and even family. While Anoushka’s father, Ravi Shankar, may be a usual suspect for the grandiose collaboration, her sister, Norah Jones, comes in as a pleasant surprise.
“My sister is someone I’ve always wanted to work with. We obviously have so much history, (although) musically we don’t,” Anoushka says. Anoushka was introduced to her Norah a decade ago, when Anoushka was 16 and Norah was 18. They’ve been an important part of each other’s lives ever since, but this was their first collaborative project. “With her, it was more of a personal desire to work with each other. We sat in a room together and brainstormed. There was a song that I had been singing in the shower for years, that I thought she’d be perfect for. I sang it to her and she latched on,” Anoushka says.
Sting was another important influence on both Anoushka and Karsh who had to be included.
“When we asked Sting to be a part of our album, he said he was willing, but wouldn’t have time to write anything. So we wrote the whole song, I sang a scratch and sent it over to him and he agreed to do it,” Karsh says. “To be able to not only collaborate with but also write music for Sting is the most exciting thing.”
Also included in the album are: _________________________ . Anoushka and Karsh hope that listeners will experience the album as a journey.
“I hope listeners spend time with the album and listen to it as a journey,” Karsh explains. “It’s intended to be one big journey with other short trips embedded in between.”
San Francisco-based DJ Cheb I Sabbah, who has released several albums with six degrees, has a deep level of respect for both Anoushka and Karsh. Sabbah is sure that listeners will discover new depths and talents in both artists with Breathing Under Water.
“They’re both very talented musicians, from slightly different backgrounds. Anoushka’s heritage (family and father in particular) is all about music. And a little known fact is that besides playing drums and being a DJ, people are going to discover even further what a great composer Karsh is. He is multitalented— he can sing, which people don’t know; he can play guitar and keyboard,” Sabbah says.
As far as the cross-genre accessibility of the collaboration, Sabbah says, “I think they were both already accessible. Anoushka was totally accessible. Karsh, being who he is, with his electronic vibe, way accessible. It’s just a different take.”
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