The 1971 Concert for Bangladesh was the original superstars-saving-the-world event that predated Bob Geldof and all the others. Shankar and George Harrison put together the gig after Shankar, his musical mentor on the sitar, had alerted him to the plight of millions of starving and flood-afflicted Bengalis who were then locked in a short but bloody fight for independence from Pakistan.When Shankar came to start his set there was rapturous applause for the first sounds from his sitar. "If you appreciate the tuning so much, I hope you will like the playing even more" he told the audience in a deadpan voice.
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