Ravi Shankar to get Grammy for lifetime achievement

Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar will be honoured with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously, organisers of the Recording Academy announced on Thursday, the first Indian to get the prestigious award.

The award will be presented on February 10 at the 55th Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles.

Shankar, 92, a three-time Grammy winner, died on Wednesday after undergoing a heart-valve replacement surgery at the Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California. "The decision to honour Ravi was made before his death. He was personally notified by phone by our President/CEO Neil Portnow last week," Grammy spokeswoman Stephanie Schell told PTI after the awards were announced.

Shankar was a true pioneer in introducing Indian music to the West, Portnow said, adding the music icon influenced artists across classical, jazz, pop, rock, and world music genres, including the Beatles, John Coltrane, Philip Glass and his daughters, Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar.

"As one of the world's most renowned sitar players, three-time Grammy winner Ravi Shankar is a true ambassador for international music," said a statement issued by the Academy. "A humanitarian and philanthropist, in 1971 Shankar, along with George Harrison, organised the Concert for Bangladesh, which paved the way for many other fundraising charity concerts," it stated.

Shankar's 'The Living Room Sessions Part 1', released in April, had been nominated for Best World Music Album for the 55th Annual Grammy Awards. His daughter Anoushka was also nominated in the same category for her album 'Traveller'. Shankar last performed in California on November 4 along with Anoushka.

Other recipients of this year's lifetime achievement Grammy awards are Glenn Gould, Charlie Haden, Lightnin' Hopkins, Carole King, Patti Page, and Temptations.

He called me, wasn't confident about surgery success, tweets Bachchan

MUMBAI: Ravi Shankar spoke to Amitabh Bachchan a few days before his surgery and the actor says the sitar legend did not seem very confident about the operation. Bachchan tweeted on Thursday, "...he had called me up a few days back just before going into surgery... just wished to speak to me... now gone!!". He added, "And in his short conversation he did say that he was going in for surgery and did not seem very confident of its success..!!" The actor said,"I have had many such experiences with people, who have in a sense had some premonition, of an unpleasant happening... Strange."

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