You
could say Gingger Shankar’s mother and grandmother were born to be musicians.
They hailed from a musical family, but they were hardly groomed to perform. In
fact, the women were expected to sacrifice their careers to care for their husbands
and children. Shankar pays tribute to her illustrious but frustrated ancestors
in the New Frontiers multimedia program Nari,
featuring a short film directed by Sun Yunfan (trailer
here), which
was staged at Festival Base Camp during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Gingger
Shankar is the daughter of Dr. L. Subramanium, arguably the best known
classical Indian musician currently touring the world today. However, Shankar
makes it readily apparent their relationship is somewhat strained. She was
expected to conform to her family’s wishes and forgo a promising music career, just
as her mother had—but Shankar was less compliant. (Presumably, her great uncle
Ravi Shankar was more progressive, since by adopting her mother’s maiden name,
she obviously invokes his memory.)
Shankar’s
grandmother Lakshmi was once quite famous in India. She had numerous
bestselling records and performed in a ballet written by Nehru. Shankar even
had a starring role in a vintage Bollywood musical, stills from which
tantalizingly appear throughout the Nari short
film and accompanying slide show. In contrast, her daughter Viji never had a
fair chance to realize a fraction of her potential. Although she was recruited
for a special George Harrison touring showcase, viewers get the sense that was
seen as sort of a family franchise. After years away from the music business,
Shankar’s mother started planning her debut solo album, but she only
provisionally recorded half the songs before succumbing to cancer.
While
there are some striking animated sequences in Sun’s short film, the main
attraction of Nari is the live
concert element. Gingger Shankar’s music is incredibly distinctive, blending
classical Indian traditions with hip hop and electronica, but in a way that
sounds organic rather than contrived. Clearly, she regularly listens to a wide
array of influences and bakes them all into her rhythmically forceful music.
Although
playing to pre-recorded tracks can be problematic, it makes sense when Shankar
and her trio play accompany her late mother’s surviving vocal tracks (which
have been duly remixed to fit her conceptions). The melodic and harmonic
diversity of her set is also impressive. There are a lot of hummable tunes in Nari, as well as some virtuoso playing.
