Indian music legend Ravi Shankar, the man former Beatle George Harrison hailed as “the godfather of world music,” died Tuesday night in San Diego’s Scripps Memorial Hospital.. He was 92 and had been a resident of Encinitas, a suburb north of San Diego, since 1992.
According to a statement issued Tuesday night by the Ravi Shankar Foundation, last Thursday he underwent heart-valve replacement surgery, which – while successful – he was unable to recover from, his family said in a statement.
Shankar’s death comes just six days after he earned his most recent Grammy Award nomination for Best World Music Album, a category in which his daughter and protégé, Anoushka, 31, is also nominated. His other singer-songwriter daughter, Norah Jones, is a multiple Grammy Award-winner in her own right. Anoushka and her mother, Sukanya Shankar, were at Ravi Shankar’s bedside when he died Tuesday night.
“It is with heavy hearts we write to inform you that Pandit Ravi Shankar, husband, father, and musical soul, passed away today,” said a family statement. “We were at his side when he passed away.”
The office of India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also confirmed the death, calling Shankar a “national treasure.”
By San Diego 6 News Editors
Story Published: Dec 18, 2012
Encinitas – A public memorial service is scheduled Thursday in Encinitas for Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar virtuoso who died in San Diego last week at the age of 92, organizers announced Tuesday.
The service will begin at 10 a.m. at the Self-Realization Fellowship on Highway 101 and include tributes and prayers for family and invited friends, said Stuart Wolferman, who served as a family spokesman following Shankar’s death.
Members of the public will also be welcomed, he said. The 20-year Encinitas resident, whose collaboration with George Harrison led the late Beatle to play the sitar in a couple of songs by the “Fab
Four,” died Dec. 11 following surgery to replace a heart valve at Scripps Mercy Hospital.
He is survived by his wife of 23 years, Sukanya; two daughters, Anoushka Shankar, a sitar musician who was recently nominated for a Grammy Award, and five-time Grammy winner Norah Jones; three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
The family has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Ravi Shankar Foundation at JustGive.org.