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Catherine Thomas

Ruchit Mohan

English Research paper

21th November 2014

The impact of the indian culture on the beatles

No band has influenced pop culture the way the Beatles have. They were one of
the best things to happen in the twentieth century, let alone the Sixties. They were youth
personified. They were unmatched innovators who were bigger than both Jesus and rock
& roll itself: During the week of April 4, 1964, the Beatles held the first five slots on the
Billboard Singles chart; they went on to sell more than a billion records; and very
recently 2000's 1, a compilation of the Beatles Number One hits, hit Number One in 35
countries and went on to become the best-selling album of the 2000s, selling about 32
million albums worldwide.
Every record was a shock when it came out. Compared to R&B artists like the
Rolling Stones, the Beatles arrived with mucic like nothing else. They had already
absorbed Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry. And the only thing that

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seperated the beatles from the rest was that they were writing their own songs. They
made writing own material expected, rather than exceptional. As musicians, the Beatles
proved that rock & roll could embrace a limitless variety of harmonies, structures, and
sounds; virtually every rock experiment has some precedent on a Beatles record. As a
unit the Beatles were a synergistic combination: Paul McCartney's melodic bass lines,
Ringo Starr's slaphappy no-rolls drumming, George Harrison's rockabilly-style guitar
leads, John Lennon's assertive rhythm guitar- and their four fervent voices. As
personalities, they defined and incarnated the Sixties style: smart, idealistic, playful,
irreverent, eclectic. Their music, from the not-so-simple love songs they started with to
their later perfectionistic studio extravaganzas, set new standards for both commercial
and artistic success in the british-pop. Beatles transformed rock anf roll to rock music,
reconciling the roots of early american rock and roll with an unconventional approach to
composition arrangement and production.

West meets East- Indian culture in the Beatles

From 1965 to 1975, India played a significant role in the growth of British and
American rock. A fact that has never received adequate attention from weatern artists.
This phase of interest in things Indian coincided with the rise of the hippies and the
Woodstock generation. India symbolized spiritualism, freedom, peace and beauty. For
rock musicians, Indian music crystallized these qualities, and many leading practitioners
glanced eastwards for musical and philosophical inspiration. The Beatles, acknowledged
as the pillars of rock, were the most profoundly influenced. This change had influenced

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both the music and the lyrics. Unlike the romance songs from the previous years, that
were active and determined with colorful romance, the songs from late 1965 were slower,
with eastern sounds, less expressive, and with relatively vague lyrics. This change in
Beatles art was the effect of Indian culture.
The association of the Beatles with the Indian music has been cited as on of rocks
greatest leap. It was the time when most artists wanted to get themselves into recording in
studios and create an album richer than the previous one but here in the case of the
Beatles, it was looking as they were looking at it in a very studious side of music. They
didnt just want learn about the instrument and add a song with it in their next album,
they wanted to experience the Indian culture and make it impact them individually.
The story line in the Beatles movie Help! (1965) Had an Indian association as
someone had left a sitar on the set for an exotic effect. Intrigued by the instrument, lead
guitarist George Harrison picked it up and strummed a few notes, connected with it
instantly. The first attempt to sitar sounds in popular Western music probably rang out on
the sound track of Help. Harrison first plucked sitar on record, just a few brush-strokes
creating Norwegian Wood later that year. Soon afterwards, he met sitar maestro Ravi
Shankar in London, and asked for formal training in sitar. In an interview George
Harrison stated that it was the first time he ever had a real urge to learn music with a bit
of discipline.

Norwegian Wood- the beginning of a cultural movement

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Norwegian wood remains john Lennons more enigmatic vignettes, a bittersweet
reminiscence of a private encounter with a woman. Music critic Richie Unterberger stated
it as undoubtedly the Beatles' greatest lyrical triumph during their folk-rock phase. The
songs mystique lies in the Indian flavour. Lennon vocal gracefully descends in E major,
with George Harrison echoing the melody of a sitar. Norwegian wood confirms that
Lennon and Harrison had taken their discussion on Indian music to heart. It is clear that
Harrison sitar was merely intended to add an exotic decorative colour. The instrument is
also slightly out of tune indicating he has not yet developed proper sitar technique.
Nevertheless, Beatles Norwegian wood released in December 1965 on the acoustic styled
rubber soul, it opened floodgates for Indian instrumentations in rock music, triggering
what Ravi Shankar would call the great sitar explosion 1966-67.
Norwegian wood made such an explosion inevitable. By this time, the Beatles had
become cultural spokesperson for a new generation. But when the tidal waves of the
western infatuation with the Indian music subsided towards the end of 1960s, leaving
Shankar and other classicists feeling that their tradition had been exploited for
commercial purposes, it must be remembered that the man mot responsible for the
phenomenon, George Harrison had only just begun to develop a life long relationship
with Indian music.

Ravi Shankar influence on the beatles

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Ravi Shankar, the sitar virtuoso who became a hippie musical icon of the 1960s after
hobnobbing with the Beatles and who introduced traditional Indian ragas to Western
audiences over an eight-decade career. Labeled "the godfather of world music" by George
Harrison, Shankar helped millions of classical, jazz and rock lovers discover the
centuries-old traditions of Indian music. He also pioneered the concept of the rock benefit
with the 1971 Concert For Bangladesh. His close relationship with Harrison, the Beatles
lead guitarist, shot Shankar to global stardom in the 1960s.
Harrison had grown fascinated with the sitar, a long necked, string instrument that
uses a bulbous gourd for its resonating chamber and resembles a giant lute. He played the
instrument, with a Western tuning, on the song "Norwegian Wood," but soon sought out
Shankar, already a musical icon in India, to teach him to play it properly. aining
confidence with the complex instrument, Harrison recorded the Indian-inspired song
"Within You Without You" on the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,"
helping spark the raga-rock phase of 60s music and drawing increasing attention to
Shankar and his work.

Conclusion

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The type of instruments used by the Beatles is what makes it very apparent of
their cultural musical influence. If you disregard everything you now have read so far,
and just listen to a song like Within You, Without You or Norwegian Wood, you will
strongly here something that is definitely a string instrument. This is the sitar, which we
discussed earlier, but thats not the only instrument from India that they used. Specifically
in within you and without you the only instruments used are native India instruments.
Besides the sitar, the other instruments are the tanpura, sarangi, jal tarang, and tabla.
These are basically everything needed in India to create a musical group. It includes a
bass, percussion, and two string instruments. This is equivalent to creating a band by
having a guitarist, bassist, drummer, and keyboardist in the United States.
The Beatles first started of as a mix between rock and pop music but after
traveling to different places all over the world, they came across cultural influences
which forever changed their music into unique pieces. The particular place in which Im
talking about, India, had the most influence over their music. The main influence was the
adaptation of using the sitar, which then led to the use of other instruments from India as
well as traveling their to learn more about them. After traveling there and writing many
songs while being there, it became very obvious in the later 1960s how the almost
always adapted an India musical instrument in all of their songs before they would
eventually split up. Thanks to George Harrisons curiosity in the sitar and the help from
Ravi Shankar, the Beatles forever adopted many of the ways of classical music in India.
But as for me, if I look at it from a point as a musician beatles were and will always be an
experience as they evolved as musicians and the maturity in their music from 1962-1970.

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From rock and roll to rock/pop and the to folk rock, pychedellic rock, beatles have made
their fans experience all sorts of music with purity and originality.

Work Cited

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Ghosh, Palash. "George Harrison and India: The Real 'Magical Mystery
Tour'"International Business Times. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.ibtimes.com/george-harrison-india-real-magical-mystery-tour-212539>.

"Pandit Ravi Shankar's Influence on Beatles." : North, News. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.
<http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pt-ravi-shankar-beatles-sitar/1/237354.html>.

"Indian Culture on the Beatles." Andrews Music Blog. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.
<https://blogs.longwood.edu/andrewsmusicblog/2013/04/29/india-culture-on-thebeatles/>.

"The Beatles Biography." Rolling Stone. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.

<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/the-beatles/biography>.

Lavezzoli, Peter. "The Inner Light- Geroge Harrison." The Dawn of Indian Music
in the West: Bhairavi. New York: Continuum, 2006. 167-170. Print.

Beatles Orientalis: Influences from Asia in a Popular Song Tradition, David R. Reck
Asian Music, Vol. 16, No. 1 (1985), pp. 83-149