[Northkeep] 15th c Spain/India Connection

[Kathryn Helstrom]

While sitting in my car this morning listening to NPR, I heard an interview
with Anoushka Shankar (daughter to Ravi Shankar), who just released a new
album "Traveler" in which she plays her sitar with flamenco artists from
Spain collaborate to create a stunning album of stringed instruments.  In
the interview, she said that flamenco has its roots in Indian sitar music.
 In the 1420s, travelers from India went to Andalusia and the result was
the flamenco guitar tunes we Westerners are so familiar with.

When Anoushka began working with the Spaniards, they had difficulty in
creating music together without one or the other departing from the
established forms of their respective instruments (sitar and guitar).  They
researched together to find an ancient form of flamenco that melded well
with an old form of sitar music, and the result was the album, "Traveler."

You can hear more about it on the NPR website
http://www.npr.org/templates/search/index.php?searchinput=anoushka+shankar&sort=match&tabId=hoa


Or, if this link doesn't work for you, simply Google NPR, search Anoushka
Shankar and listen to the Morning Edition of "A Sitar Player in Andalusia."
 There is also a link to listen to one song from the album, "Boy Meets
Girl."

I am not a musician, but I love both flamenco and sitar.  I had no idea
they were related, or that there was an Indian influence in Spain in the
15th century.

Franziska

-- 
Remember this: that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed
in the performance of every act of life.  --Marcus Aurelius