Ravi Shankar Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“I love the work of Matisse and Picasso, but I don't have enough millions to own one. And I don't really believe in owning art, anyway.”

“I think musicians and actors have all these problems, because of the popularity and the opportunity.”

“'Ravi' means 'sun.' It's a Sanskrit original word. And 'Shankar' is another name of Shiva, one of the holy trinity god that we worship.”

“I was admired by all these hippies, and it was wonderful playing at Monterey and Woodstock, performing for half a million people.”

“I try to give to my music the spiritual quality, very deep in the soul, which does something even if you are not realizing it or analyzing it - that's the duty of the music.”

“In the olden days, I believe Mozart also improvised on piano, but somehow in the last 200 years, the whole training of Western classical music - they don't read between the lines, they just read the lines.”

“I don't appreciate avant-garde, electronic music. It makes me feel quite ill.”

“I appreciate very much Vilayat Khan, the sitar player, and Bismillah Khan, the shehnai player; and among the tabla players, of course, Alla Rakha, Kishan Maharaja, and all these people.”

“I have my own spiritual guru, and I'm so happy, and I feel so satisfied that I might appreciate many other famous gurus, but, you know, I am not attracted that way because I have found the person.”

“My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: 'Indian music,' they said, 'is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.'”