In the 1960s, most Americans had never heard Indian music. Then Ravi Shankar came along and changed everything. Shankar was born on April 7, 1920, in Varanasi, India. He began studying the sitar -- a large stringed instrument with a long neck -- at age eighteen. He practiced for hours every day, following the traditional Indian system of learning from a master musician. In Indian classical music, performers do not follow written notes. Instead, they improvise -- they create music on the spot using patterns called ragas. Each raga has a specific mood and time of day when it should be played. Shankar became the greatest sitar player of his generation. His fame spread when George Harrison of the Beatles asked Shankar to teach him to play the sitar. Harrison used sitar sounds on the Beatles song "Norwegian Wood" in 1965. Suddenly, millions of rock fans wanted to know more about Indian music. Shankar performed at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969. He played for enormous crowds who had never heard a sitar before. He won three Grammy Awards and was nominated for an Academy Award. Shankar proved that great music has no borders.