New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Gingger Shankar is a singer, virtuoso violinist, composer, model and songwriter, and was born into one of the world's most acclaimed and influential musical families. As a musician she has worked alongside notable artists such as Trent Reznor and The Smashing Pumpkins, and was recently featured on Katy Perry's album Prism. An accomplished film composer, she collaborated with
James Newton
Howard to score Charlie Wilson's War, co-composed the score for Mel Gibson's
Passion of the Christ, as well as 2011 Sundance Audience Choice Award winner Circumstance.
Shankar has now unveiled her latest work Nari, a multimedia family project. Nari is the unsung story of the lives of Lakshmi Shankar and her daughter Viji, two extraordinary artists who helped bring Indian music to the West in the 1970s through their close collaborations with
Ravi Shankar and
George Harrison. Gingger Shankar is the daughter of Viji and granddaughter of Lakshmi, who herself was sister-in-law of musical luminary Ravi Shankar. In Sanskrit, "Nari" means both "woman" and "sacrifice." As two female artists who grew up in a patriarchal society and tried to establish themselves in a male-dominated field, Lakshmi and Viji fought to overcome numerous challenges in both their artistic and personal lives as they were catapulted from conservative Indian culture into the stratosphere of American rock & roll.
The film Nari premiered at the Toronto and Sundance Film Festivals, and was recently covered in the New York Times and WIRED. Shankar is currently recording an album of original music for Nari, which will be released in spring 2017.
The full exprience of Nari expands upon the film with a multimedia performance and features live vocals, Indian percussion, and Gingger's unique double violin set to an entrancing blend of hip-hop, high energy solos and electronica infused with Viji's never-before-heard recordings rooted in the Hindustani vocal tradition.
Shankar also recently scored the music for We Will Rise, a documentary starring First Lady Michelle Obama about her "Let Girls Learn" initiative. The film tells the stories of several girls pursuing an education within the context of the ongoing effort to strengthen girls' educational opportunities worldwide.
Shankar writes of her involvement, "I was brought in to the project by the director, Tony Gerber, who I've worked with previously on other films. He is such a great director and I love working with him! As soon as he told me what the film was about, I told him I was in. For me, working on stories about Women and Girls and empowering them is what my focus is! And Michelle Obama is one of the most inspiring Women in the world- for the work she has done over so many years for children and her 'Let Girls Learn' initiative."
