In the year 1970, when The Beatles star George Harrison and documentary filmmaker Howard Worth thought of making a film on Pandit Ravi Shankar — then a young sitar maestro who had aroused a lot of curiosity among the western audience in the last few years of the sixties — the sole purpose was to de-mystify the ‘strange’ music that Shankar played. Titled Raga: A Film Journey into the Soul of India, the film that was produced by Shankar and Harrison on a 35 mm print, will be released on October 14 in the DVD format by Shankar’s online music label, East Meets West Music. “It has been so many years since I went on this journey with Howard Worth to document my special relationship with music, my origins and my life as an Indian musician working in the west. The film had an universal appeal,” says Shankar, 90, in an e-mail interview from California.

Narrated by Shankar himself, Raga... opens with his journey back to the small town of Maihar in Madhya Pradesh to revisit his guru Baba Alauddin Khan. It further goes on to explore Shankar’s life as a musician and teacher in the United States and Europe. Shot in India and the US, it goes on to show rare and candid footage of Shankar’s influences and collaborations — from his famed dancer brother Uday Shankar to his guru Baba Alauddin Khan and his association with legendary western musicians like Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison.

But why re-release Raga... now? “It was a very special period of my life. I really want today’s generation to see what it was like for me to be in such a unique and exciting position— to be the first to bridge the gap between the East and the West and to devise a new way to attract, educate, initiate and draw those in the West to the exceptional world of Indian classical music and culture,” says Shankar.

The DVD release of Raga... features a digitally re-mastered 35 mm print that has been optimised to modern colour range and resolution and comes with a fully re-mastered audio track, featuring live performances by Shankar.

The occasion has also brought forth special memories for Shankar. “My dear friend Yehudi Menuhin, with whom you will find some special clips of our collaboration in the movie, was helpful in my initial tour to the US and Europe but I learnt showmanship, stage etiquette and presentation from my superstar elder brother. Another important thing was that there was no language barrier — I was fluent in English and French and could explain our music and intricacies of various rhythms to them, including to Menuhin,” says Shankar who performed a lot with Menuhin through the seventies and eighties. Talking about Harrison, Shankar says, “George became my student in the mid-sixties which certainly opened up the biggest door in all the continents for me. I loved George very much for the fact that he was so deeply attracted to our music, vedic culture and the traditions of India.”

However, Shankar says he was strongly critical of the hippie culture of the period, and of being treated as a messiah by the western youth. “Everybody looked at me as a guru and well, I did make the incense and the guru shirt famous and all the sitar makers in the west rich. I could have worn an orange robe and become a billionaire if I wanted to, but I was strongly critical about their wrong approach to our beautiful music via drugs,” says Shankar as he makes an indirect reference to a 70s Woodstock Music Festival where stoned Westerners had come down to attend his concert.

Shankar feels that his story may inspire people to rediscover all the music traditions that the East has to offer. “It is with Raga that I offer my old admirers a chance to reminisce those times. For the younger generation, it is an opportunity to rediscover the universe from which I have cultivated my music,” he says.