L. Shankar: world renowned violinist and composer in South Florida
By Sanjay Chandran
Violinists from India are known for fiddling with their fiddles. As early as the 1930s, the legendary Carnatic (South Indian classical genre) musician T. Chowdiah had added an extra string to his violin. Over the years, it was rumored that it may have even included two more strings. However, it is debatable whether this modification enhanced Chowdiah’s formidable skill as a Carnatic violinist. Then, in the 1950s, violinist Ramesh Aniyan tried to deepen the fingerboard and add four additional strings to his violin, but the attempt failed because it made the violin too heavy. Master violinist L. Shankar (aka Shenkar) introduced the 10-string double violin in the 1980s, the perfect answer to his quest and one that could account for the whole range of the orchestra’s string section from violin to double bass. When he played on the double violin, the sounds emanating from each violin reinforced one another with tonal haloes whose effect was hallucinating. As a teenager, I vividly remember listening to Shenkar play the Carnatic Raga Nadanamakriya on the double violin; in contrast with the plangent, echoing sound of the slow-paced melody, the gamaka-laden embellishments fell around the melody like sparklers during Diwali.
Shenkar, born into a renowned family of musicians, is the son and disciple of V. Lakshminarayana and L. Seethaklakshmi. He began to study the violin at the age of five. In the early part of his career, he was an accompanist to Carnatic vocal stalwarts and a member of a violin trio with his brothers L. Vaidyanathan and L. Subramaniam. He also performed extensively with the great mridangam player Palghat Mani Iyer. In India, he received numerous awards for his outstanding musicianship, including the Best Violinist Award from the Madras Music Academy. He came to the US in 1969, where his work as a soloist and collaborator with such artists as Zakir Hussain, John McLaughlin, and Vikku Vinayakaram placed him in the forefront of the expansion of Indian music into the realm of acoustic fusion music combining Indian music with elements of jazz. In the 1970s, with John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain, he co-founded the legendary Indo-jazz group Shakti. Shakti with John McLaughlin, the first album by Shakti, was a brilliant amalgamation of traditional Indian classical music and modern European jazz. This album and others captured the hearts of music connoisseurs all over the world. Not only did the music of Shakti inspire me to explore my own collaborations with progressive jazz, pop, and other musical genres from different parts of the world, but it also paved the way for “world music” to develop into an important creative musical genre that coincided with the globalization trends that accelerated in the latter part of the 20th century. In addition to expanding the frontiers of world music, Shenkar has continued to expose the international audience to Indian classical music, often combining Carnatic and Hindustani (North Indian classical genre) styles.
I am eagerly awaiting his upcoming live concert for the Rhythm Foundation at Miami Beach, FL on April 16, 2022.
About the Author
Sanjay Chandran, a resident of Boca Raton, FL, is an accomplished violinist of Indian classical (Carnatic and Hindustani) and world music genres. He has played solo concerts and performed with renowned Indian instrumentalists such as Chitraveena Ravi Kiran and Ronu Majumdar, and he has received many awards/honors, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for “The Most Promising Young Violinist” from the Government of India. He has performed and continues to perform original acoustic jazz fusion music with highly acclaimed jazz artists such as Bill Barns, Andrew Moorehead, Bruce Voris, and Daryll Dobson, to name a few. He founded Global Rhythms, a nine-instrument band that performs a blend of Indian Classical music with contemporary jazz, Celtic, Middle Eastern, and African music and co-founded the band Third Alignment with Daryll Dobson on the guitar and Sudhir Limaye on the tabla.
