Rich black and white imagery shot by legendary LIFE magazine photographer Paul Schutzer (1930–1967) for the February 1957 feature, Sitar Jam Session: East and West have a musical fest of jazz and ‘ragas’. From the article:
The most popular stringed instrument in India is the sitar, which looks like an elongated guitar, and the best sitar player in India is Ravi Shankar. Now on tour in the U.S., Shankar with his sitar was guest of honor at a party for musicians and scholars given in New York by Jazz Historian Marshall Stearns. For part of the evening such jazz notables as Dizzy Gillespie and Willy the Lion Smith played for Shankar. For them he played his ragas (compositions) accompanied by tabla (drums) and tamboura (droning stringed instrument).
The jazz experts were deeply impressed by Shankar’s ragas, because just as U.S. jazz has improvisational flights, his Eastern music improvises on traditional themes and rhythms. But though the ragas are far more complicated and refined than even the best Western jazz, Shankar said happily, “I love jazz. Its wild rhythm is so much like our Indian folk music.”
[ All images via LIFE photo archives / ©LIFE ]
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