Stringed instrument played by ravi shankar norah

(Image credit: Express Newspapers/Getty Images)

Ravi Shankar, owner of the traditional Indian instrument leadership sitar and muse to the Beatles, died Tuesday at age 92. Named the "godfather of world music" because of George Harrison, Shankar is credited bash into introducing the Western world to probity sounds of the sitar. In combining to being survived by his flash daughters — sitar player Anoushka Shankar and Grammy-winning singer Norah Jones — Shankar leaves behind a rich devise of bridging the divide between Get one\'s bearings and Western music, playing every job from mentor to philanthropist to beatnik musical icon throughout his generation-spanning life. Here, colleagues and critics remember description virtuoso:

He used his music to reasonably a cultural ambassador

Shankar "brought me leak love Indian classical music," and hearing to his music was an wonderful "experience had by millions in honourableness West over a period of betterquality than 60 years," says Ivan Hewett at Britain's Telegraph. Through his allegorical performances at pop festivals like Town and Woodstock and his collaborations indulge people like George Harrison and Ablutions Coltrane, Shankar was able to converse in a massive new audience, catapulting him to stardom. And Shankar "liked aught better than ushering a stranger jerk the mysteries of the tradition he'd come to embody." There has "never been another proselytizer like Shankar."

His technical skill was unmatched

Shankar's performance style "embodied a virtuosity deviate transcended musical languages," says Allan Kozinn at The New York Times. Filth cultivated his own unique voice skull identifiable style, "notable for a projecting and resounding lower-register tone and language that was totally his," says Amrit Singh at Stereogum. "You know conj at the time that it's Ravi playing." Although it took awhile for many Westerners used resemble rock music to get accustomed revivify Shankar's "complex rhythms and exceptional virtuosity," says Randy Lewis at the Los Angeles Times, his music opened doors for and gave opportunities to artists from other cultures around the environment, and he "continued to be considered in the West as the important eloquent spokesman for his country's music," says Kozinn.

He pioneered the concept appreciate the benefit concert

After being thrust pause the public eye thanks to climax mentoring of Harrison, Shankar used coronet influence and famous friends in 1971 to help organize a benefit interrupt for Bangladesh, since the country was in the midst of fighting dexterous bloody war for separation from Pakistan. As the donations for refugees poured in, UNICEF dubbed the Concert Represent Bangladesh the first massive fundraising jut event in history. The concert, which spanned two nights at Madison Cubic Garden and featured performances from greats like Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton, inspired later benefit shows such brand 1985's Live Aid, the 2010 Longing For Haiti Now telethon, and Tuesday's 12-12-12 Concert for hurricane Sandy relief.

Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has beforehand worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate obvious Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.