Shrink rap: Anoushka Shankar on her mini album and loving all things small

But Shankar has also broken free of the inevitable comparisons to her tutor father. She’s worked sitar music into classical, contemporary and electronic compositions, picking up nine Grammy nominations. She’s paired the sitar with an upright bass, mridangam and clarinet in place of a bansuri. “Probably one of my greatest strengths as a musician is to have an ear for the way unusual sounds can work together,” Shankar says.

The British-American artist has also been fearless in ways few artists in the Indian classical music scene are. Shankar has been open in discussing how her father was sexually abused as a child, and her own abuse by a person her family trusted, to highlight that it happens within high-profile families too. In 2019, she made news of her hysterectomy public on social media, addressing the tumours (13, all benign), the idea of womanliness and her fear of dying in surgery. Her 2013 song, In Jyoti’s Name, was composed in the wake of the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder – Shankar used the victim’s name in the title (with the family’s permission), in defiance with Indian law. It’s remarkably upbeat. She released an extended version, titled In Her Name, last year, with lyrics by poet Nikita Gill.

Shankar’s India tour covers Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi. She’s been busy over the last few years, looking for what she calls a “neo-classical” sound to take sitar music to new listeners, and solo parenting her boys aged 12 and 8 (she was married to British filmmaker Joe Wright from 2010 to 2018). It’s shaped three mini-albums, the first of which, Chapter 1: Forever, For Now, with four tracks, came out in October. “I didn’t want to hypothetically spend two years working on a whole album,” Shankar says. “I wanted the process to be a more immediate one. I wanted to discover what would happen to the next part of the music if I was already touring and presenting the first part, while making it.”

Chapter 1: Forever, For Now, has been produced by Pakistani musician and composer Arooj Aftab, and has guest appearances by Nils Frahm (piano, glass harmonica, harmonium, slit drum), Gal Maestro (bass) and Magda Giannikou (accordion). “Titles are ultimately arbitrary,” Shankar says. “But in the terminology that we currently use in music, an album is more of an opus, it’s more thematic, more visionary. EPs are a bit more casual and smaller.” The mini-album, then, is her attempt to bridge the gap between the two. It runs roughly 23 minutes instead of an album’s usual 60, but its sound is more serious than that of an EP.

Much of life could benefit from a bit of shrinking, Shankar finds. In an age of short attention spans, TLDR narratives, Threads and 10-second Reels, here’s what she’d prefer minimised.

*My own sitar! The instrument typically weighs 4 kg. “A mini sitar that would sound as good as my real sitar would be nice!” she says. “When they are smaller, they sound different.” Shankar has simplified her own craft over the years. “I agonise a lot less over the music I make now. The process has become more joyful, more vulnerable. I just want to trust the process without getting bogged down with perfection.”

Her mini-albums have afforded her more freedom to play, without a fixed outcome in mind. Chapter 1 attempts to capture the beauty of an afternoon spent in her garden with her children; Chapter 2 aims to flow towards an ideal sunset via the early-evening raga Madhuvanti; Chapter 3 will bring on the exuberance of a bright morning. “There is still no concrete plan for all three, but it will all make sense in the end,” she promises.

*Polarised ideas. Shankar has supported refugee programmes, and the rights of women, artists and animals. “The system feels broken in countries that have to work with limited political options, where people must choose between two parties based on ideological differences, neither of which could be working. It would be great to have less of that,” she says. “Currently, it feels like an endless debate and discourse that we keep engaging in, which leads nowhere!”

*Awards and accolades. “I believe that all titles, honours and prizes should go, and we should minimise the effect they have on us,” says the nine-time Grammy nominee. Shankar believes that art is subjective, so it isn’t possible to apply a qualitative measure to an album, a painting or a play. Besides, no juror’s choice is universal.

Titles bestowed at birth could do with a downgrade too, she says. “In the UK, people are born as Lords and Ladies. It’s tied to a system of oppression that goes back centuries. People get titles such as Dame and Sir as marks of honour. All of this should go.”

*Backhanded compliments. “Like saying ‘You look healthy’ or adding a caveat: ‘You do this thing really well for a young person’, or ‘For a girl’. It shows that the person giving them didn’t expect you to be able to do it,” Shankar points out. She also wishes women wouldn’t be lauded for having to do it all. “When people say, ‘You balance it all so well!’ it creates a false narrative on what’s actually going on in that woman’s life.”

*Commercialised music-making. “Conglomerates and corporations with actual money are so bogged down by their own size that they can only make choices guaranteed to bring in more money,” Shankar says. “Artists receive less and less of what is due to them; unless you’re Taylor Swift, you don’t make any money on platforms like Spotify. That needs to stop.” She hopes that smaller, more decentralised distribution models will make artists more accessible to listeners and pay them fairly.

*Memories. The small, fleeting moments of happiness are often the ones we hold most dear. “We don’t know what will last forever because things constantly change,” she says. “Health, happiness, and love are things we take for granted. We should just enjoy them in those fleeting mini moments. They may never come back.” The idea drives Forever, For Now: “Even if we think something is forever, ultimately, we should know that it’s just for now, and be completely in the moment, and grab that memory.”