The Sitar in Western Tradition: Jones and Harrison (and Donovan?)
A few months back, when I was first learning to use my electric guitar, I was eager to jump into learning songs to which I knew the lyrics by heart. One such song was The Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black, a song that was, at least in my interpretation, wholly about depression. I looked up the tabs for the song’s intro and found the riff relatively easy to play. However, right off the bat I was aware that my guitar wasn’t producing the same echoing twangy sound that could be heard on the record. I attributed that to the fact that I was ridiculously new to the instrument and that it was likely that the Stones had used some effects pedals to achieve that sound. It wasn’t until I watched a live version that I became aware of the fact that Brian Jones (to whom, in all honesty, I’ll probably dedicate another journal entry in its entirety), was playing the riff on a sitar. Thus began my sort-of-fascination with the sitar and with its use in classic rock in particular. Alongside Brian Jones, George Harrison and Donovan (among others; I’m just focusing on the ones that are familiar to me) used the Indian instrument in some of their tracks as well.
Brian Jones, arguably the greatest multi-instrumentalist of the classic rock era (and that’s something I will readily argue), supposedly learned the sitar in the early to mid-1960s under the guidance of sitar master Imrat Khan. He then went on to incorporate it into several of the Stones’ songs, most notably Paint It Black. The use of this contextually-unusual instrument lends the song a sense of ethereality and composure, a small break from the typical guitar-based blues riffs present in their other early songs. In the music video for the song, Jones can be seen sitting on the floor, cross-legged, plucking at the sitar while swaying back and forth to the music. The video’s contrast between the common western instruments (the guitar, the drums, and the bass) and the sitar echoes the era’s fascination with Eastern tradition (ex: hippie culture).
While Brian Jones introduced Eastern influences to the work of The Rolling Stones, George Harrison of The Beatles was the most notable western sitar player of the era, and perhaps of all time. He received lessons from the globally-renowned Ravi Shankar in the mid-1960s and applied his newfound skill to songs such as Norwegian Wood and Within You Without You. As compared to The Stones’ use of the sitar, The Beatles used the instrument to achieve a psychedelic effect more than anything else. In fact, the flowy, swaying feeling Harrison’s sitar produces is little short of magical. If you were to your eyes and focus on the music, it would seem to transport you to a mystical reality far friendlier than our own. Similarly, Donovan’s utilization of the instrument, most famously in Hurdy Gurdy Man achieves a distinctly psychedelic effect.
It is evident that Jones, Harrison, and Donovan influenced modern western musicians, particularly psychedelic musicians, to use the sitar in their music. For instance, the band The Brian Jonestown Massacre released a song called Donovan Said and multiple songs featuring the sitar. In addition, psychedelic rock band Elephant Stone is fronted by a sitar player and the instrument is prominently featured in their songs. Countless other bands, well-known and otherwise, have adopted the sitar as a supplemental instrument to their traditionally Western lineups.
