Ravi Shankar Quotes

If I ever did cross over I would like to do it tactfully. I don't want to offend anyone in country. Can you have the best of both worlds? I sure like the idea of it!

I'd play with these Indian players, the tabla and sitar.

Many people, especially young people, have started listening to sitar since George Harrison, one of the Beatles, became my disciple.

Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world.

'The Beatles' did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.

In India, I have been called a 'destroyer.' But that is only because they mixed my identity as a performer and as a composer. As a composer I have tried everything, even electronic music and avant-garde. But as a performer I am, believe me, getting more classical and more orthodox, jealously protecting the heritage that I have learned.

I've got this diverse education, growing up in classical music and existing between that and music that is more visceral, so for sure, I've always been interested in music from other cultures.

Music is open-minded and has always travelled, every country takes something from another, and that's what makes the richness of music.

A lot of Arabic composers such as Mohammed Abdel Wahab mixed sounds and instruments from all over the world. It's important to be able to propose new ways and new sounds without being stigmatised, censored or put aside.

That really makes you feel good when guys are using some of your terminology and some of your plays in a different country.

I'm conscious of the fact that I'm sort of a bridging figure. I have my Chinese literary heritage and cultural background, so I'm comfortable with these things, but at the same time, I have to navigate the Anglo-American tradition, which has a self-centred view of what Asia and what being Chinese means.

My father was up against so many different types of resistance. His whole life was an interplay of East and West. He was born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, which was under British rule then.

There was never a book, a magazine, a movie, a television show that spoke to my experience as a bicultural teen. I could find a million articles on finding the perfect prom dress or getting the guy of your dreams, but how about 'Ten Sure Fire Steps to Being the Perfect Korean Daughter and Not Be a Freak at Your High School?'

The literature of the world has exerted its power by being translated.

The good thing about 'Nuyorican Soul' is we get a little bit of everybody liking it.

I was not grown up in the U.S., nor in Japan. In order to create a video game that people around the globe can enjoy and relate to, I can't draw things deeply rooted in the local culture that I'm not familiar with. That's why we are not doing games about football or samurai.

I want to bring Indian music to the mainstream.

The travel that I've spent around the country, I always come back with ideas for L.A. and vice versa: My experiences in L.A. give me an immediacy to issues that sometimes people in Washington think about but aren't experiencing every day.

I'm not sure if it's just my pride, but I think I was able to bring out a different vibe as a Korean in Hollywood where there are many Korean Americans.

I don't think there's any danger of me playing Indian music. However, I did a song of George Harrison's 'Beware of Darkness' that was kind of like that. That was an illusion. I was playing that on a thumbtack piano, and Jim Gordon was playing tablas. He's an amazing player. That was as close to India as I ever got.

The writer, Ruth Jhabvala, livedin India but was German. My partner Ismail Merchant was from Bombay but was educated in England and he had a different view on the world. Probably they had to contend with some sort of Oregonian-ness in me that they didn't understand and didn't know where it was coming from.

Seriously, American pop culture must be the most predominant force on the planet, next to pollution and poverty.

Growing up, I was constantly labeled an 'oreo' by my black peers because of my proper speech and 'valley girl accent.'

I'm not a Rachel Dolezal. I don't fake tan; I don't have the cornrows, I don't misappropriate. I just want to be Beyonce.

A funny thing happens when you go to another country or invest in a company from another country. Suddenly everyone in that community realizes that YC is for them, too.