L. Shankar

Shankar was born in Madras, India, and grew up in Ceylon (current-day Sri Lanka), where his father V. Lakshminarayana, a violinist and singer, worked as a teacher at the Jaffna College of Music.[1] He learned to play the violin and first performed in public in a Ceylonese temple at the age of seven.[1]

After performing with various Indian singers for several years, Shankar founded a trio with his brothers L. Vaidyanathan and L. Subramaniam that performed throughout India. In 1969, he went to the United States, where he studied ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University.

There, he met jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Garrison, and John McLaughlin. With McLaughlin, Shankar founded the group Shakti in 1975, one of the early groups in which Eastern and Western musical traditions met. They released three albums: Shakti (1975), A Handful of Beauty (1976), and Natural Elements (1977).

After the band broke up, Shankar was a violinist with Frank Zappa for a short time and then founded the group The Epidemics and released a number of albums as a band leader. With Peter Gabriel, he wrote the soundtrack for the film The Last Temptation of Christ (1989), for which he received a Grammy Award. In the following years, Shankar worked on several of Gabriel's albums. Since 1996, he has been working with the violinist Gingger as the Duo Shankar & Gingger.

Shankar has also performed with Elton John, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Yoko Ono, Stewart Copeland, John Waite, Steve Vai, Ginger Baker, Nils Lofgren, and Sting.

• Shakti, with Shakti (1975)
• A Handful of Beauty, with Shakti (1976)
• Natural Elements, with Shakti (1977)
• Touch Me There (1979)
• Who's to Know (1980)
• Vision (1983)
• Song for Everyone (1985)
• The Epidemics (1986)
• Evening Concert (1986)
• Do What You Do (1986)
• Eye Catcher (1987)
• Two Musical Traditions of India (1987)
• Pancha Nadai Pallavi (1989)
• M.R.C.S (1989)
• Nobody Told Me (1990)
• Songs of Devotion (1990)
• Soul Searcher (1990)
• Raga Aberi (1995)
• Enlightenment (1999)
• Live in London, Vol. 1 (2000)
• Eternal Light (2000)
• One in a Million, with Gingger Shankar (2001)
• Celestial Body (2004)[2]
• Open the Door (2007)
• In a Box (2012)
• The Revelation (2013)
• Champion (2014)
• Transcend (2015)
• Face to Face (2019)
• Chepleeri Dream (2020)

• Bombay Jazz (1992, documentary)[3][4]
• Secret World Live (1994) (violin, backing vocals)
• Heroes (2006–2009, TV series) (vocals)

• Official Facebook account
• Official website
• Article from DownBeat magazine (1978)