Annapurna Devi - Career

Career

Annapurna Devi became a very accomplished Surbahar player of the Maihar gharana (school) within a few years of starting to take music lessons from her father, and started guiding many of her father's disciples, Nikhil Banerjee and Bahadur Khan) in classical music as well as in the techniques and intricacies of instrumental performances. Meanwhile, Alauddin Khan's Sitar student Ravi Shankar married Annapurna. (There is no documentary evidence, saying on the basis of Pandit Jotin Bhattacharya's two vol. Bengali book, Ustad Allauddin Khan o Aamraa. The marriage took place because of the eagerness and proposal of Uday Shankar.). The marriage between Ravi Shankar and Annapurna Devi took place when Ravi was 21 years and Annapurna was only 14 years old. The marriage lasted more than two decades, and she gave birth to a son, Shubhendra Shankar (1942–1992), whom Annapurna Devi trained in Sitar. Shubhendra Shankar (or "Subho", as he was popularly known) had rigorous training in Sitar under the tutelage of his mother. His father, however, chose to interrupt his musical talim or training and, instead brought him to the United States. Shubhendra died at an early age, after a marriage and the birth of three children. Shubhendra did not have a solo career in classical music, but did very occasionally accompany his illustrious father Ravi Shankar in concerts in the USA and abroad.

In the 1950's, both Ravi Shankar and Annapurna Devi performed duets in Delhi and Calcutta, principally at the college of her brother, Ali Akbar Khan. But later, as Shankar's career manifested in Europe and the United States, Annapurna Devi increasingly chose to become more reclusive. There are many speculations as to her withdrawal from public performance. She herself said she will reveal the reasons to no one. Annapurna Devi was already a master of the Surbhahar when Ravi Shankar came to study with her father, Alauddin Khan, in the court of Maihar, India.

Read more about this topic:  Annapurna Devi

Famous quotes containing the word career:

    What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.
    Arlie Hochschild (20th century)

    From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)

    It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.
    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)