My Compelling Story

Ragini Shankar is a professional instrumentalist based out of the finance capital of India, Mumbai. As her name suggests, Ragini means melody, an embodiment of music. Born to a family of a musical lineage spanning over seven generations, Ragini began her training in Hindustani classical music on violin at the tender age of four under the tutorship of her mother, Dr Sangeeta Shankar, and famous grandmother, Padmabhushan Dr N Rajam, ace violinists of the country. Being incredibly talented in her musical abilities, Ragini has grown to show brilliance in her performances. Her asset is her ability to generate vocal music on the violin (Gayaki Ang, a revolutionary technique invented by her grandmother) with astounding precision, tonal quality, outstanding fingering, and break-neck bowing methods. As a young 11-year-old, Ragini gave her first public show at Bharat Bhavan Cultural Center (Bhopal), a multi-faceted centre for performing arts. Thereafter, she has performed in many prestigious music festivals all across India like the Sawai Gandharva Music Festival (Pune), Doverlane Music Festival (Kolkata), Gunidas Sangeet Sammelan (Mumbai), Saptak (Ahmedabad), Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan (Mumbai), Maihar (Banaras Hindu University), Music Academy (Chennai), Kala Academy (Goa) with her mother and grandmother. She has also performed in various cities like Gwalior, Delhi, Bhopal, Bangalore, Amravati, Baroda, Dehradun, Hyderabad, Surat, Mangalore, Kanpur, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Thane, etc. Apart from having appeared on many stages all over the country, she has also performed widely in countries like Canada, USA, Germany, Netherlands, France, Singapore, Hungary, Belgium, and Malaysia. She is a faculty at Whistling Woods International - School of Music (Mumbai), a premier film school, since its inception. Ragini also gives lecture demonstrations and conducts workshops on a regular basis while globe-trotting. She is a recipient of the Cultural Scholarship from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. Music enthusiasts have highly applauded Ragini for being one of the most promising faces of Indian classical music. She has also surpassed in her academics being a top ranker in Mechanical Engineering as well.