Gingger Shankar’s Nari (Part 1)

Tigers love pepper, they hate cinnamon…

In 2009, Zach Galifianakis as “the Hangover’s” Alan, dropped this little nugget on us. Is it true? No idea (don’t really want to be locked in a cage with a tiger to find out). What I can tell you is that tigers love Gingger more than they love pepper. How do I know? Because I dare anyone (man or beast) who has heard Gingger Shankar not to be immediately enchanted by her incomparable sound.

Gingger Shankar is not only a member of one of the most accomplished musical families in the world, but is a tremendous talent in her own right. Since 2004, Gingger has worked with Katy Perry, Trent Reznor, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Zakir Hussain, Rabbit in the Moon and has toured with the Smashing Pumpkins just to name a few.

She debuted at Carnegie Hall as a soprano in Osvaldo Golijov’s opera “Ainadamar.” Gingger has also composed for and performed on the soundtrack of several motion pictures including, Mel Gibson’s epic “The Passion of the Christ” (nominated for best original score), the Oscar nominated “Charlie Wilson’s War,” the Jackie Chan and Jet Li starrer “The Forbidden Kingdom,” “Brahmin Bulls” starring Roshan Seth and Sendhil Ramamurthy, the Sundance award winner “Circumstance,” and “Monsoon Shootout” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Gingger also serves on the Sundance Institute Alumni Advisory Board and is currently working on the film “Heartbeats” alongside Jay Z and his Roc Nation team.

But wait…there’s more (in case you weren’t already thoroughly impressed). Gingger is the only woman in the world to play the double violin. This ten-string stereophonic instrument covers the entire orchestral range, including double bass, cello, viola, and violin.

Gingger is currently touring the country with her new multimedia project, entitled “Nari: The Shankar Family Project.”

Click here for Nari tour dates, and for those of you in Chicago, don’t miss Gingger’s performances at the City Winery on Sunday April 17^th at 5PM and 8PM featuring DJ Warp.

Nari…

Nari is a sanskrit word which means both “woman” and “sacrifice.” Appropriately, Gingger Shankar has named her latest multimedia presentation “Nari: The Shankar Family Project” to share with us the unsung story of Lakshmi Shankar (Gingger’s grandmother) and her daughter, Viji (Gingger’s mother)—two extraordinary artists who helped bring Indian music to the West in the 1970s through their close collaboration with Ravi Shankar (Lakshmi’s brother-in-law) and George Harrison. This arresting, multi-generational, multimedia mash-up features animation, family archives, and a live performance.

“Nari” had its North American Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and its US Premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival as part of the Sundance Institute’s 10^th Anniversary celebration of its New Frontier Program.

The Chicago shows (April 17 at 5PM and 8PM) for “Nari” at the City Winery are part and parcel of the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival.

I hope you don’t mind, I put down in words…

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Gingger about this wonderful project and specifically about her upcoming dates in Chicago. I’ve put together excerpts from that interview so that you can learn more about the “Nari” in Gingger’s own words:

[GS on how Nari came to be]:

“This project (Nari: The Shankar Family Project) came about shortly before my grandmother (Lakshmi Shankar) passed away (in 2013). She was giving me scrapbooks and I didn’t really know a lot about her life and my mother’s life as to how involved they were in the cultural Indian explosion into the west. To me they were always mom and grandma and their accomplishments didn’t come up very much. So I was looking at these scrapbooks with her and I started to ask questions like ‘What were you doing at the White House?!’ The more pictures I saw the more questions I had…it was insane. And her answers were always the same: ‘Well, we did these things, but they weren’t a big deal. Nobody really needs to know these stories.’

They were very modest women. That conversation started the whole journey for me to figure out who these women really were. I started to dig more and more and realized just how instrumental they were in this whole Indian music revolution. They were writing the music, they were singing, they were conducting the orchestras. They were such an integral part of this movement. If you look at the album covers of that movement these two women are there. If you look at the performances, these two women are front and center yet nobody knows who they are. So ‘Nari’ started as a passion project for me to find out who my mother and grandmother really were and turned into this multi-media project after finding my mother’s recordings and archival footage of them.

[GS on the multi-media nature of Nari]:

The reason this became a multi-media project is because the visuals became such an important part of it. My grandmother was a dancer in the 40s and obviously there was all this awesome music and I found that this beautiful story couldn’t really have been told without the visuals to go with it.

[GS on performing in Chicago]:

“I spent quite a few years in Chicago between working with the Smashing Pumpkins and the Opera. I have fond memories of the Palmer House Hotel and driving up down Wacker drive like Batman. I love the city and to me it is one of the most architecturally beautiful cities in the world. It’s clean, beautiful, and the food is amazing. I have a lot of friends there. Going to Chicago is like a homecoming.”

[GS on how the Chicago performances will differ from the TIFF premiere]:

The cool thing about this project is that it is always evolving. The City Winery shows will have visuals that we didn’t available in Toronto and the percussionist Prasanna Devaraja is joining us as well. He is a very talented South Indian percussionist from London whom Raviji discovered when he was a teenager.”

By now it should be abundantly clear that Gingger Shankar is a strong, talented, intelligent, independent woman. What’s more, she appreciates and pays tribute to the fact that she stands on the shoulders of giants; her mother and grandmother, who were trailblazers in their own right. Strong talented women appear to run in Gingger’s family as her relatives Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar (Ravi Shankar’s daughters) carry forward the mantle as empowered women, themselves. Let’s continue learn more about the Shankars, shall we?

We are family…

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve most likely heard the name Ravi Shankar.  You likely also know that he had a profound influence on George Harrison and the Beatles and was nominated for an Oscar in 1982 for best original score (Gandhi). You may even know that in 1974 Harrison produced the album “Shankar Family & Friends,” which was one of the first release’s on Harrison’s Dark Horse Label. Harrison and Shankar would go on to release a four disc compilation box set entitled, “Collaborations.”

What you likely don’t know is that one of the key artists involved in the making of this historic collaboration, was Lakshmi Shankar, Raviji’s sister-in-law. Lakshmiji was a noted classical dancer and vocalist. She even conducted Raviji’s musicians after his heart attack during the Family & Friends tour. She is perhaps most known in America for singing the vocals for the song “I am missing you” from the aforementioned Shankar album. The song was produced and arranged by Harrison.

Lakshmi Shankar’s daughter Viji was also a tremendously talented composer, musician, and singer. In 1974, along with her mother and aunt Kamala Chakavarty, Viji Shankar joined the “Music Festival from India” revue sponsored by Harrison. Vijiji also sang on Ravi Shankar’s studio album of the same name, produced by Harrison, and later toured with Harrison and Shankar.

Viji’s husband Dr. Lakshminarayana Subramaniam is both a physician and an accomplished musician. He is an internationally renowned violinist, composer, conductor, arranger and record producer. Both Dr. Subramaniam and his wife Viji earned their Master’s degrees from the California Institute of the Arts. In 2012, Dr. Subramaniam performed with Stevie Wonder at Wonder’s message of peace United Nation’s concert.

Both Viji and her husband would go on to compose for Mira Nair’s Academy Award winning film Salam Bombay! and her ground-breaking hit Mississippi Masala. Vijiji also sang on the films’ soundtrack. Dr. Subramaniam also performed as the featured violinist for the films “Little Buddha” and “Cotton Mary.”

The loving couple had four children, including the brilliantly talented Gingger Shankar. In 1995 Vijiji lost her battle with cancer. In 1999 Dr. Subramaniam married world famous singer Kavita Krishnamurthy.

Gingger Shankar has carried the legacy forward of her famous family with aplomb and we can’t wait to see what she does next.  Stay tuned for more.

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