Anoushka Shankar loves performing live

Anoushka Shankar was last in Delhi two years ago, and between then and now, she’s gotten married and had a baby.
Working through her pregnancy on her latest album “Traveller”, and then going on a 60-city Europe tour, Anoushka came to India via a two-week holiday in Thailand. While her husband, director Joe Wright, was in Varanasi, Anoushka got chatting with us about being a musician and a mum, all at the same time.
Your latest album comes four years after your last one…
Yes, and quite a bit has happened in the middle (laughs)! But I don’t like to, force, music, you know. I like it to flow freely, when it comes. Also, I like to focus on one thing at a time, and I was doing a lot of touring ’coz I love performing live.
What’s it about?
I suppose it’s an exploration of Indian music and Flamenco. Obviously, I love Indian classical music, I always have… but I also listen to and have loved Flamenco for quite a few years now. I always found it really interesting, but I never knew much about it. Finally, I suppose that love kind of grew into an interest in exploring it for my album.
And it must be called “Traveller” for a reason?
Yes, three reasons actually. One, that, my life has always been about travel ever since I was little, what with growing up in three continents. Second, because the music is between Indian classical and Spanish, so it’s like I’m a traveller taking my Indian classical tradition to Spain. And third, it’s about all those nomadic people from the past – you know, Flamenco’s roots can be traced back to India – the Rajasthani gypsies who went to Spain through the Middle East and Central Asia centuries ago.
Has becoming a mother changed or influenced your music?
Well yes, it’s... if I could put my finger on one thing, more mature than before. And it’s more about me feeling more like a woman, and being completely comfortable in my skin. ’Coz making this album was so creatively satisfying – I was composing it when I was pregnant – so it felt like such a profoundly creative process… It had to be, I was making a baby, and that’s the most creative you can get!
For you, life has changed a lot in the last two years. Are marriage and motherhood taking time away from your music?
It is the same life and the same things that I do, but of course, what with getting married and then moving to London, and then having Zubin… But there hasn’t been the need to make room for anything. It has just opened up so many doors and expanded my life into facets that never existed. There’s just... so much more of you now that you didn’t know there was before – does that make sense?
A lot of women, when they have a baby, put a brake on their work, getting back to it a few years later. But you haven’t paused, have you?
Well I was working while I was pregnant – I hadn’t planned it, I just found out while I was working on the album – but I was also taking really good care of my baby. And I didn’t want to completely stop because finally that’s what who I am and that’s my life. I wanted it to be like I was having the baby, and not someone else with a different kind of life. I wanted him to know me and grow up knowing what I do. And yes, you do want to not miss any single moment of when they’re growing up, and it just happens so fast, you know. The 60-city Europe tour was really hectic, and I had Zubin with me all the time, but every time I felt like he needed to spend time with Joe, I was flying back and forth from London… And there were times when I would just have to tell my team that I will not be seeing my emails for the next week, I will come and perform, but that’s about it. And those times I would just like to be with him – it doesn’t matter if your house is messy, as long as your kid is happy – and be doing simple stuff, like housework. Yes, housework! I’m not a big fan of it, though, but I do like to do the dishes, I find it really calming.
When you say you want Zubin to grow up knowing what you do, most people in the public eye keep their children away from their work, so that they aren’t aware of that part of their parents’ lives till much later…
I think that’s part of the modern celebrity culture. Parents obviously want to protect their children and keep them away from the limelight, and doing that has many, many positives. With Zubin, I don’t want to keep him away from my music because that is who I am; and also because I would like to share it all, share my music, with him. I’d want him to grow up listening to it.
When a musician is married to a filmmaker, how are things at home? Do you discuss each other’s work?
Oh my God, you make us sound so intellectual! Yeah, we do talk about work sometimes, and do give advice about each other’s work and all, but mostly, it’s just, normal. We also love to just, hang around and… you know, a lot of people used to think that being my father’s daughter meant we are always discussing music, but we weren’t, of course, that’s just one part of it all – we also loved to watch just really silly movies together!
You were raised in three continents. Do you want your son’s upbringing to be similar or different from yours?
We still haven’t planned anything – where he’ll go to school or where he’ll be raised. Of course there’ll be a lot of travelling involved, ’coz I’d like to keep bringing him to India, coz he is Indian too, and not just British, and that’s a very, very important part of who he is. I’d want him to be in touch with that part of his roots. But he’s British too, so I guess there’ll be a lot of travelling between London and India!
And how soon do you want to start his training, whether musical or in film?!
(Laughs) Well, I wouldn’t force him, so it would be whenever he feels ready. Yeah, right now he does like to bang his hands on anything he can find! I started my musical training when I was seven, and that’s early for some, but it’s also late for many ’coz some people start learning when they’re only three or four. I would want to share my music with him, of course, but again, we haven’t really thought about it or planned it.
You did one movie and that got you a National Award nomination, you’re trained in Bharatnatyam – haven’t you wanted to act or dance more, get into more facets of performing?
I did one film and I don’t think I’m doing any more. I wanted to find out what it would be like, and I found that I didn’t really enjoy it! About dancing, one can do everything together – I mean, Beyonce’s the perfect example of that – but when I’m doing something, I like to give it my all. So I wouldn’t want to go on stage to dance where people would come to watch me, and then just go and do something stupid. It has to be perfect, or it’s not good enough, you know?