In review--Raga!
Ravi Shankar Raga (A Film Journey into the Soul of India) Archival DVD 1971/2010 East Meets West Music/Harmonia Mundi When you think about it, times haven’t changed all that much since the late 1960s. Sure, the 1960s and 70s were littered with drugs, drop-out mentality and multimedia distractions in contrast to today’s distractions including the Internet, I-Pads and other digital devices, the same problem remains which is the lack of attention spans and impatience. Traditions that were revived in the 1950s and 60s through the return to cultural roots re-emerged with world music, but again we are faced with the digital distractions, including drum machines and synthetic instruments wedded to more traditional acoustic ones. One of Pandit Ravi Shankar’s regrets from the 1960s, portrayed in the 1971 documentary Raga (A Film Journey into the Soul of India) was the distractions and impatience found in people from the West. But even in India, he laments about one of his Indian ...