Ravi Shankar spent his early years touring Europe as a dancer in his brother's performing troupe before deciding, in his late teens, to give up that path entirely and return to India to train rigorously in classical sitar under a demanding traditional teacher, living for years under conditions of strict discipline and isolation typical of that style of training.
He built a respected classical music career in India over the following decades, but it was his collaborations with Western musicians in the 1960s, including a well-known friendship with a member of a major British rock band, that introduced Indian classical music to an entirely new global audience largely unfamiliar with its traditions.
He was careful, even amid this new fame, to insist that Indian classical music not be treated as a passing trend or a novelty backdrop for Western pop music, spending considerable effort educating international audiences on the discipline and structure behind the improvisation they were hearing, rather than letting it be dismissed as simply exotic background sound.
He performed at some of the largest music festivals of the era, composed extensively, and mentored generations of younger musicians in both India and the West, spending a career deliberately building a bridge between two musical traditions that had, until then, largely existed without much serious dialogue between them.
He continued performing into his nineties, widely regarded as the single most influential figure in bringing Indian classical music to international recognition.