Be it her music, background, views or take on life, you can’t box Anoushka Shankar. The musician remains relevant with changing times and continues to reinvent herself while remaining vocal about causes that stir her soul.

Increasingly, I find that labels don’t matter. I am just me. I have a heritage. I have a culture. I have a background. I am not an Indian, or a woman, or woman in her mid-30s, or this or that," says Anoushka Shankar, musician and daughter of late Pandit Ravi Shankar, the legendary musician.

But there is one which is hard to escape even for her -- that of being the daughter of her father, the famous musician. For Shankar, her father was also her teacher. “I can’t dissect the two. Someone doesn’t stop being one person to become the other. He was both,” she says emphatically.

Shankar has taken her father’s legacy forward. Last year, she was nominated for a Grammy Award for a fifth time for Home, the word related more to a musical homecoming. Shankar was making a classical album after many years as opposed to the collaborations that she has done in the recent past. “The experience was similar to what someone who has lived in a foreign country and has been speaking a second language for a long time would feel while slipping into her mother tongue. It felt natural and free,” she says. The album was homecoming in another sense as well. She played with her long-time collaborator Tanmay Bose. She was also recording in her newly set-up home studio.

Playing in tandem

Shankar also released her new album, Land of Gold, earlier this year, which was different from the other albums that she has done so far. “It is my most political album. The theme is predominantly influenced by the refugee crisis that has been in the news so prominently.” This album was also partially influenced by Shankar's previous album, Home. She found the contrast unjust and disparate that while she was talking about home, millions were fleeing wars and trying to take their babies to places of safety. “And it was this experience that seeped into the music and thematically dealt with aspects of a journey and search for a place of safety,” she adds.

While Home might have been an album of pure classical ragas, Shankar is known for many of the varied collaborations — with the likes of Lenny Kravitz, Thievery Corporation, Herbie Hancock and A R Rahman. The artist who lived and grew up in Delhi says: “Every time you work with someone you learn something. And when you are working with a legend they bring something that you can't bring. I take each one as a learning opportunity and also to have some fun.”

The beautiful collaboration with singer Norah Jones, her famous half sister in Traces of You is one major example of two people from completely different music traditions bonding over music. “We did have a relationship even though not a musical relationship. But on the day of the rehearsals we had a really organic, natural playing experience,” she remembers. She also attributes it to the fact that both of them collaborate a lot with other people. “So we both listen and we both find our own space. And since there is a relationship there is already some trust and ease,” she adds.

Shankar marked her debut at 13, and was accompanied by tabla maestro, Ustad Zakir Hussain. “Of course I was nervous. I was a teenager. It was Siri Fort. There were 2,500 people there. It was a big day. It was terrifying. But that was 20 years ago,” she speaks staccato sentences while remembering the experience which seems to be strongly etched in her memory.

From a stage debut, she went on to record her first album Anoushka when she was just 16. “It was surreal to stop school for a week and make a record or even to go on tour and then return to school as a normal kid. Going back in time, maybe I would not have done it in the same way. If it would have been my kid I would have let him be a kid a little longer,” she says as the protective parent in her comes to the fore. But in hindsight she admits that the unusual experiences taught her and made her who she is. “Moreover, once you do something by choice, there is a different understanding and commitment to it,” she adds.

Some right notes, some off key

The world of music (and generally as well) has changed drastically, since her debut in 1995. “When I played there were still concert reviews and music journalists who commented on how I had played a raga. I don’t think that there are so many music journalists with newspapers any longer. The report reads more like she wore a red salwar kameez and this celebrity sat in the front row,” she says with a laugh

Another change is, of course, the almost complete collapse of the recording industry. When Shankar marked her debut, she recalls it was the last few years of the old way of doing things. “There were major labels, conventional system of CDs and even cassette tapes,” she says.

But changes have also lead to positive effects. She likes the direct relationship that she now has with people through social media. “Listeners directly hear what I am saying and that seems to have its lovely side.” And it also has other benefits. During a tour, Shankar's tanpura broke in Paris. She shared it on her FB wall and within a minute, there were a 100 responses linking in Indian musicians or just people who had a tanpura. “We had a tanpura within three hours,” she says with a smile.

However, the changes also mean that mediums such as Youtube and Spotify share performances that have hit many artists hard. “My concert from Spain has 2 million hits on YouTube. But I didn't get any money from that. It would be great to sell my CD two million times,” she says.

While the collapse of the music industry meant that many of the artists are constantly on tour, Shankar on the contrary has cut down on touring in the past four-five years, thanks to her children. While her children travel with her, she says it is more because she doesn't want to leave them. Her tours are not more than two weeks long; earlier she was often on the road for two to three months.

But the UK-based artist does incorporate some amount of touring in her calendar. In December last year she was on a fourcity tour in India along with her director husband Joe Wright (director of films such as Pride & Prejudice and Atonement and two sons, Zubin and Mohan. In August, she performed at different festivals, including the Helsinki Festival at Helsinki, Shambala Festival in Diseworth and at CarFest, Freefolk — the last two in the UK. This October, she would be touring Europe and the US giving as many as 16 different performances at different venues.

Looking back

Shankar recounts some really amazing experiences while on tour. She performed at the Boom Festival in Portugal to an audience of 40,000 people in 2014. “I sometimes play at festivals but I don’t always get the audience that is dancing while I play — which is really beautiful when it does happen.”

At the other end of the spectrum is her experience at the Globe Theatre. “It is an intimate, beautiful, small venue where one can play to the back of the room,” she says. Shankar had designed and curated a festival around Rabindranath Tagore as she felt this was the obvious, appropriate theme for Shakespeare’s Globe.

Shankar alters the tone of the music based on venues. There is a marked difference while playing at a very intimate chamber hall as compared to a festival. During Boom Festival, which is an outdoor location, she changed the percussion and set it a bit high.

However, she does not change her music to cater to different countries. “This implies that audiences all over one country are the same — which is not true. If I play at the Dover Lane Music Conference, for instance, versus if I play a corporate concert in a hotel banquet hall, the audience is different. There is a really knowledgeable audience in one place and a less knowledgeable audience who are listening to have fun and enjoy it. Neither is wrong. But they are different,” she says.

An essential part of any musician's life is a lot of riyaaz. But Shankar does not have any fixed number of hours for the same. So in between riyaaz, tours, and creating albums, how does a musician achieve work-life balance? She is quick to retort: “Do you ask any men that question? Do men answer it? I don’t think there is anything as balance. Every day is different as a parent has to know that everything has to be flexible. I make a plan and an agenda but then that has to turn upside down completely. A good support network is the key,” she says as she walks off to join her children, slipping seamlessly from a musician into the role of a parent. Yes clearly, she doesn’t want to be boxed into a label.