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Sitar

Rikhi Ram Music Instrument Manufacturing Indian
Ravi Shankar

Not on view

Ravi Shankar’s performances of Hindustani classical sitar music in the West had a profound influence on musicians from John and Alice Coltrane to violinist Yehudi Menuhin to George Harrison and the Beatles. His appearances at the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969 added fuel to the craze for sitar sounds in psychedelic rock. Shankar owned and played this sitar and gave it to Mercury Records executive Shelby Singleton as a gift on a trip to America in the early 1960s. It has since been displayed at the Musicians Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Technical Description:
Toon and/or teak wood, metal, plastic, gourd; five melody strings, three drone strings, thirteen sympathetic strings

Sitar, Rikhi Ram Music Instrument Manufacturing (Indian, est. 1920), Toon and/or teak wood, gourd, metal, plastic

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Courtesy of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame