Anoushka Shankar: The 13th Floor Interview

Acclaimed Indian musician Anoushka Shankar, the Queen Of The Sitar, is coming to New Zealand in March for two performances.

The daughter of Ravi Shankar will appear at the WOMAD Festival in New Plymouth during the weekend of March 16th and then take part in the Auckland Arts Festival on Sunday, March 19th.

The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Anoushka Shankar recently about Land Of Gold, her latest album, which she’ll be featuring during these shows.

Click here to listen to the interview with Anoushka Shankar:

Or, read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: You’re doing the WOMAD thing.

AS: Agreed!

MD: And then you’re coming up to Auckland for the Auckland Arts Festival as well; so, that’s very exciting. Hopefully, you can just give me an idea, to start off with, of what you’re going to be doing. You’re touring with a couple of other musicians, are you?

AS: I’m touring with a quartet. We’re playing my album, Land of Gold, which I released in 2016, and have been touring, on and off, quite intensely since then. We’re bringing that to Australia and New Zealand. We tour as a quartet: we’ve got myself on sitar, of course, and a beautiful Indian Shehnai player – which is a reed instrument – and then my main co-writer from Land of Gold, Manu Delago, who plays the Hang and all the percussion, and then an upright bassist/pianist.

MD: Excellent! The Land of Gold album came about a year, or so, ago. My understanding is it’s based around the story of displaced people. Maybe you can give me a little background on why you decided that you needed to make some music that addressed that issue.

AS: It was less of a decision, and more of an emotional response, really. The summer of 2015, I was sitting home on the sofa, breast feeding my new baby, and watched more TV than I normally do; and it was like I’d been in a cocoon, a bit, just having had my second kid, and suddenly was shocked to see the news, and watched the unfolding of the refugee crisis; and, obviously, sitting with a baby in my arms, the thing that struck me the most was the numbers and the visuals of the children and the babies, and just the contrast between my experience sitting on the sofa, by virtue of where I was born in the past – what I have – and these hundreds of thousands of people just simply trying to bring their kids to safety. In some ways, even more than their story, watching some of the reactions to their life experience – the odd throw away, bigoted comment that someone might make, or the more conservative news papers that might have angles about them – that were just so shocking: the lack of empathy, and the lack of humanity in some of the reactions and the policies. That was around the time I was going to go into the studio and start making some music; and that was the emotion that I was predominantly feeling; and it just evolved that way: that this music was first one song, and then two songs, then three songs, and then it felt like I wanted to explore across the space of an album.

MD: Are you familiar with the refugee crisis that we have down in this part of the planet, at Manus Island in Papua New Guinea?

AS: Yeah! I wouldn’t say I’m familiar. I definitely know about it, and I’ve been seeing and hearing that it’s really firing up; but I would feel nervous to make any comment or opinion….

MD: Right! Fair enough! Well, we have a new prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, who’s made the offer to take the refugees off the Australian’s hands, but they seem to be not that interested in taking that offer up; so, these poor folks are stuck on this Island without any kind of food or water, and all that stuff. It doesn’t seem to be a good situation. Hopefully, things will resolve themselves soon; but who knows?

AS: It’s just so surreal, isn’t it? When we talk about people like this…

MD: Yeah, because there’s only so much you can do from outside. Our government is trying to do the right thing, but it doesn’t seem to be helping, at this point, because I think – like you said – there are certain factions that have a very cynical attitude to these people and their plight, and don’t seem to be too concerned about it; and it’s a disturbing trend….

AS: Yeah…! I guess, the thoughts I was having, at the time, was just that thing of… closing down doors – and I don’t mean that physically, I mean that internally – and how the act of closing down doors to other people makes it easier to live ‘on track’, in a safer way. I feel like – moving out of the individual – that’s almost encouraged on national levels…. With music, I guess what I wanted, and what hoped, was that: with things like music, and with art, you can crack those doors open a little bit, because you reach people less through an intellectual process – where we might often have different opinions, and different experiences, and different arguments to make – but can connect through that emotional, empathetic place where you’re making someone feel something, as opposed to trying to change the way they think; and I feel that, sometimes, that might have a very subtle impact, that won’t necessarily have a very direct, measurable impact, but I think it will have an impact nonetheless.

MD: Have you had any kind of interactions with concert goers around the globe as you’ve been touring this, that has shown that discussions have, at least, been opened up?

AS: I have. I’ve received some fascinating emails after a show, where – exactly as you say – people say that they hear the music, or… one song might make them cry, and then they’ll go and read about it, and then from there, they want to know more about the situation…. there’s a kind of evolution that can happen with music. It doesn’t necessarily change the world as much as I would like it to!

MD: Right, but we can only try!

AS: Yeah.

MD: On another subject: my understanding is that you worked on a soundtrack to a film earlier this year – an old silent film from 1928 – that was based around the construction of the Taj Mahal. Is this the first time you’ve done a film soundtrack?

AS: Yeah. It was very recent, actually; it was just weeks ago that we finished. We did a premiere at the London Film Festival, at the Barbican, and then took it on tour to India. It was lovely, because it was my first film score, but it was also a live performance film score – played to the film – which was something I’d never done, and was really challenging and terrifying, and totally amazing and exciting. I really, really enjoyed writing for film. At the beginning, it felt really odd and foreign to compose in a way that was about a narrative other than my own – as strange as that sounds – just because I’m used to writing my own music; and so, it felt like constantly having to rein myself back to the film, and always remember to serve the film. It felt like a real, beautiful learning curve! I loved to get to work in such a different capacity, and I would love to do more.

MD: Was it a film that you were familiar with, that you had seen before, and had a history with?

AS: Not hugely. The BFI – the British Film Institute – do an annual restoration – they do one film a year, as part of the festival – and because of the focus on Indian cinema, due to this UK-Indian year of culture, that was happening, to mark the seventieth anniversary of independence and partition, they chose this film, and asked me to score it. I was familiar with the director, and that team of film makers had made a trio of films, and… I’d seen one of the other films, but I hadn’t seen this one; so, they sent it to me when they asked me to do it. Yeah, it blew me away! It’s not so much that it’s the best film I’ve ever seen, but I’d never seen anything from India, from that time period, that was made at that scale and scope…. It’s from 1928; it’s a silent film, but it has these incredible, huge, epic battle scenes – for example – with hundreds of horses and elephants and camels, and it’s so well made and directed. It’s just much more vast and epic than anything I’ve seen from that time period.

MD: You must have had to watch the film with a very different eye – or ear, for that matter – when you’re thinking about what you’re going to compose around it. How did that work for you?

AS: Oh, it was insane! I know every shot of that film like the back of my hand, at this point. It was a very intensive process, because it was a silent film: so, an hour and forty seven minute movie meant an hour and forty seven minutes of music; just the volume of music required was huge! It was – like I say – just a new way of working: having to think in terms of what the theme is for the film, and how to help augment that with the music; it was a new way to work, and I loved it.

MD: Cool! My understanding is that you’re thinking about releasing a new album in the coming year; is that right?

AS: No!

MD: No? Okay!

AS: Well, maybe; things might change; but, as of now, I haven’t made one. I’ve had a year of touring Land of Gold, and also making this film score, which has really been the thing that’s taken up my brain space and energies; and so, I was thinking I’ll finish the Australia tour, and a few other shows I’ve got in North America in April, and then begin to think about what to do next.

MD: Because you have two children; is that right?

AS: I have two kids, yeah. They’re six and two; so, they’re quite young, and that’s quite a handful.

MD: That’ll keep you on your toes. You’ll probably need a little bit of downtime after this tour.

AS: On my toes! On my head!

Click here for tickets and more information about Anoushka Shankar’s performance at the Auckland Arts Festival.

Click here for tickets and more information for WOMAD NZ 2018.