Anoushka Shankar returns to India with the ‘Chapters’ Tour, marking 30 years of musical evolution
It’s been 30 years since Anoushka Shankar first walked onto a stage with her sitar. Now she’s back where it all began — India. What started as an inherited legacy, has grown into a voice that’s unmistakably her own. Over the years, she’s moved easily between worlds — classical and contemporary, East and West, tradition and risk.
Anoushka Shankar brings the Chapters trilogy to India
From child prodigy to boundary-breaker, Anoushka has changed how the sitar is heard. She’s played alongside Norah Jones, Sting, Nitin Sawhney, and Herbie Hancock — each collaboration adding a new shade to her music. With 11 Grammy Awards nominations, her sound has drifted from ragas to electronic landscapes, and through it all, she’s stayed true to her classical training while never standing still.
Now, as her Chapters Tour India 2026, brings the trilogy home, the return feels right. The first notes of her story were played here, and now they find their way back. In an exclusive conversation with Indulge, Anoushka reflects on this sense of coming home — and on how music still keeps her searching.
Excerpts:
You’ve just marked 30 years of performing —congratulations! How does it feel to come fullcircle and bring your Chapters trilogy home to India for this milestone tour?
Coming back to tour India always feels meaningful, in general. And now, coming back on the 30-year anniversary when my touring career began, to return to where I started, also feels meaningful. This journey started here — the three Chapters I’ve been releasing, the genesis was here, the first show was here. So, it feels like it is coming full circle in multiple ways. It feels very beautiful.
What can fans expect from this India tour that might be different from past performances or your other international tours?
If anyone’s been following the process closely, they’ll know that over the last three years, I’ve been involved in an experiment of releasing mini albums as chapters that tell an ongoing story, and that I’ve allowed the music on tour to evolve and change as each Chapter has been released. People who came to the first or second shows will hear that the journey has come to its end now — we’re hardly playing any of the music we were playing at the beginning. But the emotional thread, the narrative, has reached completion.
If people haven’t been following the journey that closely, then it’s all going to feel even more new in terms of the band, the look, and the feeling. It’s a complete show. It tells an emotional story, from start to finish. I think of things in those terms rather than just a collection of songs, to give people an emotional journey through the show. There’s a real range of introversion and virtuosity, light and shade.
What made you shift from full-length to these modular mini albums? And did that change your connection with the sitar or the way you record music in any way?
Over the last decade, I’ve been getting more and more vulnerable and immediate about my process in the recording studio and on stage. Love Letters was probably my first EP, even though it eventually became a full album once it was complete. It’s quite freeing now that the music industry doesn’t require things to happen in a formulaic way. It was nice to think I didn’t have to see all of this as a single album, and that I could allow it to evolve over time.
Practically, it meant I could release things more frequently along the tour, creating an ongoing story that people might be interested in. As an artiste, it meant I could get really intimate and free about the process. I’ve really enjoyed it — it’s been nice to allow a narrative to unfold. It’s unusual to start releasing somethingbefore the whole story is finished and allow the live process of the tour to let the story evolve.
The trilogy moves through a spectrum of emotions. How much space do you leave for improvisation when you’re performing it live? How did thepieces change or grow throughout the tour, along with the audience?
The kind of artiste I am, I’ve never liked reproducing the complete album versions of songs, live. I’ve always toured with a band that helps me create a core structure, even if it’s not the same instrumentation as on the album. So already, it’s a different interpretation and a different sound.
I work with people who are also improvisers, able to step into that free space with me so that even when we’re playing repertoire, we can still do that in a stretchy way — I can change the beginning, or I can feel inspired and play more in the middle of a song. They’re able to journey with me and inspire me as well, because they’re contributing creatively too.
You’ve long moved beyond Indian classical and Western contemporary — there’s this in-between space. When did you stop trying to translate between those worlds and start creating your own musical language?
A long time ago, actually. But I think maybe we didn’t have the language for it in the same way. Artistes make work that reflects their world. I’m making music through the lens of who I am, the life I live, and how I see the world. I’ve always been tricultural — moving between India, Europe, and the States, touring, interacting with multiple cultures. So, a lot of those thingsare inherent within me already.
If I make music that reflects my world, it already exists beyond borders or rigid structures. It’s not me traveling from one space and meeting another artiste from another space. Does that make sense? So, I think as soon as I started writing music, it already was in that indefinable space. We just have betterlanguage to talk about that, now.
What habits from your classical training do you still hold on to, and which ones have you had to unlearn to keep evolving and experimenting with your music?
The gift of learning in a classical style gives a certain discipline and attention to craft and nuance, which will never leave me — the way it shapes the meticulous nature of a musical brain. Our classical music is also connected to a spiritual way of being, which gave me the recognition of a path and how being on that path gives you a depth of connection to oneself or something greater. That’s probably the most important thing it gave me.
What I had to unlearn was the fear of things being right or wrong. Nothing can kill a creative voice more than worrying something is wrong. There has to be freedom to explore and experiment, even if you change things or decide not to do them later. You can’t have an inner critic speaking too quickly. There has to be permission to go anywhere, to try anything, and see what feels right.
I also had to unlearn a certain formality around my relationship with music, which for me meant I kept my instrument and the music slightly at a distance. I had to learn to be a little more casual. I used to actively think, “Is my sitar my friend?” as opposed to this holy vessel. Can I approach it like a friend? Can we hang out, be playful? That really helped me.
With Indian classical music also comes this strong sense of lineage and gatekeeping. Do you think your presence as a woman soloist has changed the conversation about who gets to carry the tradition forward?
Some things come with the test of time. There may be critics in an immediate moment who say something isn’t classical, but then it gets absorbed into the tradition after a certain amount of time and becomes the tradition for the next generation. It’s normal for each generation to bring something slightly risky into a tradition. A tradition has to be living and evolving in order to be alive. Gatekeeping is a tricky one. I think who the tastemakers are may be a better question — who gets to say what’s good?
In recent years, streaming has changed how audiences connect with music. Has it changed your relationship with recording and performing?
Absolutely. The album format itself was created when the technology was invented to make 60 minutes of music on one LP. Similarly, once streaming came, it meant that people could be freer to release singles, EPs, full albums, or 200 minutes of music if they wanted. It opened everything up in a way that was very exciting.
But now that we’ve had it for long enough, I think streaming has had more negatives than positives. We all know the numbers and figures of what artistes receive for their work compared to the streaming platforms or labels. Initially, streaming seemed like a way of getting out from the conventional record label structure, but it’s become that structure. Artistes are getting even less than before. It’s quite scary, really.
When you compose in response to a crisis, like the refugee story in Land of Gold, how do you express that sense of urgency through the non-verbal language of music?
I don’t think there’s one way to do this. I just have my way. I really cherish having the duality of experience between expressing things musically and through words. Through words, we can be very direct and specific, which is important and necessary. But music can be abstract and emotional in a way that’s equally important and necessary.
When I express issues that matter to me through music, I stay focused on the emotional aspect rather than the political or intellectual. I think it’s more important to allow people to have the space to feel something, to connect with empathy or pain in a way that may create change in a more indirect but no less needed way.
Is there any advice from your father that you didn’t quite understand when you were younger but resonates more with you as you grow?
It was always about how infinite he saw music as being. I understood it intellectually, but I understand it in practice more and more. He was a master to all of us, but he still felt like a beginner, because however far he got, he could always see how much more there was to do.
The longer I do this, the more I see what he meant. Yes, we gain experience and nuance, but all that shows us is how infinite this is. That’s a really beautiful thing.
Looking forward, what new musical paths or creative projects are you excited about?
There are so many. I’m working on a couple of new things — a collaboration and a big composing project. I’m also looking forward to the Gorillaz album coming out in March. I’ll continue to tour these three Chapters, possibly including South America and the Far East, next year. That would make five continents, which will be incredible. A lot of exciting things are on the horizon.
