Hariprasad Chaurasia - Father Quotes

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My father was a wrestler and though everyone liked music in the family, it was a taboo to even think of a musical career. I used to wrestle to keep him happy. When I was about nine years old, I started learning vocal music from Pandit Rajaram, secretly! At the age of fifteen, I heard the flute for the first time on Allahabad radio. It was as if I was being transported to heaven. The flautist was Pt. Bholanath and that was the major turning point in my life. Soon after, while I was still in my teens I got an offer to work as a staff artist on Cuttack radio in Odisha/ and I accepted. It was then that my father found out that I was a musician. It was a major shock for him.

Hariprasad Chaurasia
I could develop finer and newer blowing techniques because of the power my lungs acquired through the physical exercises my father personally taught me when I was training to become a wrestler,

Hariprasad Chaurasia
Music has no differences. We played alongside each other; it was not in fusion but in unison. I have enjoyed playing with all the artists. I have collaborated with musicians from the west and fellow Indians, including Ravi Shankar, Allah Rakha (father of Zakir Hussain), George Harrison, Jean Pierre Ramphal, Jethro Tull, John McLaughlin, Jan Gabarek, Yehudi Menuhin and others. I composed for Bollywood. It made me affluent. It was Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma who asked me one day if playing in Bollywood films was all I was going to do in my life. I was not growing as an artist. I needed more. What did I have to show in terms of personal creativity, or growth? He was right.

Hariprasad Chaurasia