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Artist
Ravi Shankar (7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012), often referred to by the title Pandit, was a multiple Grammy Award-winning Indian musician best known for his virtuosity on the sitar. Shankar was awarded the three highest national civil honours of India: the Padma Bhushan, in 1967, the Padma Vibhushan, in 1981, and the Bharat Ratna, in 1999. He has received honours from the UNESCO International Music Council, three Grammy Awards, a Magsaysay award, a Légion d'honneur and was nominated for an Academy Award. He was also a posthumous recipient of the lifetime-achievement Grammy in 2012. Grammy award-winning singer Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar, also a Grammy-nominated sitarist, are among his three children. Born on 7th April 1920 in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India into an orthodox, well-off Brahmin family, Rabindra Shankar Chowdery's father, ShyÆm Shankar, was employed as a diwan (minister) by the Maharajah of Jhalawar. By the age of 13, Ravi Shankar was going along on every tour of his brother Uday Shankar's Compagnie de Danse et Musique Hindoue (Company of Hindu Dance and Music). At the All-Bengali Music Conference in December 1934, he met the multi-instrumentalist Allauddin Khan. Precisely when Allauddin Khan was born is uncertain. People hazard dates in the 1860s around 1862, but in later years he himself gave his age haphazardly. He would transform many musicians' lives, but he had an incalculable effect on Ali Akbar (his son), Annapurna Devi (his daughter), and Shankar h