Biography
After Ravi Shankar, Rahul Sakyaputra stands among the most widely recognized Indian sitar players in the United States. He issued several albums under his own name while also supplying music for film and television projects. His involvement with Vine Sweetland & the Forefathers of the New Millennium near the end of the 1990s triggered renewed attention to his catalog, prompting multiple reissues of his earliest sessions together with additional unreleased material.
Born in 1947 into impoverished circumstances, Sakyaputra—whose family name translates as “Tiger Killer”—grew up in an environment where hunting constituted the only reliable source of livelihood, so his emerging interest in music met with little encouragement. At age thirteen, already convinced that music was his true path, he left home for Bombay to apprentice with Baba Alla Uddin Khan, the same teacher who had instructed Shankar. He remained there six years, refining both his instrumental command and his spiritual grasp of classical raga forms.
While lodging with friends who operated music stores, he met George Harrison and gave sitar lessons for a time to Chris, Mick Jagger’s brother. As the late-1960s fascination with Indian music reached its height in Europe, Western acquaintances urged Sakyaputra to relocate to Denmark. Between 1969 and 1972 he performed across the continent. Shortly after arriving he made his first Western recording session, issued three decades later as The Denmark Sessions. In late 1970 Mahesh Yogi of Transcendental Meditation conferred on him the Dawn of Enlightenment, an award previously bestowed only on Ravi Shankar and George Harrison.
Sakyaputra moved to the United States in January 1972, settling first in Montreal, Canada, where he contributed to CBC radio among other activities. After a two-year retreat in Vancouver, Canada, he established himself in California in 1976 and began performing regularly with tabla master Zakir Hussein. During occasional returns to India he played before the Dalai Lama; in the United States he appeared on record and onstage with Christoph Anders and Patrick Moraz. In 1984 he released his first two solo albums—East Meets West, recorded with shakuhachi player Masayaki Koga, and Footprints in the Sky, recorded with Hussein—capitalizing on the rising new age movement. The late 1980s found him devoting most of his energy to painting.
In 1990 Sakyaputra was invited to appear in Oliver Stone’s film The Doors. Although the scenes were omitted from the theatrical version and surfaced only with the 2001 DVD reissue, word of his participation spread, and throughout the decade he performed for Hollywood figures including Goldie Hawn, Richard Gere, Tom Hanks, and Shirley McLain. In 1995 he and poet Vine Sweetland co-founded the Forefathers of the New Millennium, a world/psychedelic ensemble. Sweetland’s newly established label Zemira launched an extensive program of reissuing and recovering Sakyaputra’s late-1960s and 1970s recordings, while Rhythmic Visions released the three volumes of Live in Los Angeles. On November 17, 2002, while visiting India, Sakyaputra died of a heart attack.
Born in 1947 into impoverished circumstances, Sakyaputra—whose family name translates as “Tiger Killer”—grew up in an environment where hunting constituted the only reliable source of livelihood, so his emerging interest in music met with little encouragement. At age thirteen, already convinced that music was his true path, he left home for Bombay to apprentice with Baba Alla Uddin Khan, the same teacher who had instructed Shankar. He remained there six years, refining both his instrumental command and his spiritual grasp of classical raga forms.
While lodging with friends who operated music stores, he met George Harrison and gave sitar lessons for a time to Chris, Mick Jagger’s brother. As the late-1960s fascination with Indian music reached its height in Europe, Western acquaintances urged Sakyaputra to relocate to Denmark. Between 1969 and 1972 he performed across the continent. Shortly after arriving he made his first Western recording session, issued three decades later as The Denmark Sessions. In late 1970 Mahesh Yogi of Transcendental Meditation conferred on him the Dawn of Enlightenment, an award previously bestowed only on Ravi Shankar and George Harrison.
Sakyaputra moved to the United States in January 1972, settling first in Montreal, Canada, where he contributed to CBC radio among other activities. After a two-year retreat in Vancouver, Canada, he established himself in California in 1976 and began performing regularly with tabla master Zakir Hussein. During occasional returns to India he played before the Dalai Lama; in the United States he appeared on record and onstage with Christoph Anders and Patrick Moraz. In 1984 he released his first two solo albums—East Meets West, recorded with shakuhachi player Masayaki Koga, and Footprints in the Sky, recorded with Hussein—capitalizing on the rising new age movement. The late 1980s found him devoting most of his energy to painting.
In 1990 Sakyaputra was invited to appear in Oliver Stone’s film The Doors. Although the scenes were omitted from the theatrical version and surfaced only with the 2001 DVD reissue, word of his participation spread, and throughout the decade he performed for Hollywood figures including Goldie Hawn, Richard Gere, Tom Hanks, and Shirley McLain. In 1995 he and poet Vine Sweetland co-founded the Forefathers of the New Millennium, a world/psychedelic ensemble. Sweetland’s newly established label Zemira launched an extensive program of reissuing and recovering Sakyaputra’s late-1960s and 1970s recordings, while Rhythmic Visions released the three volumes of Live in Los Angeles. On November 17, 2002, while visiting India, Sakyaputra died of a heart attack.
Albums
