GUITAR ARTISTRY FROM THREE CONTINENTS
Indian classical slide maestro has taken style to new levels
A musician given the honorific of “Pandit” in India is more than just a talented musician. They’re literally a living master, an embodiment of the art and as both scholar and performer, Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya has earned his title. He is an obvious choice to take part in the International Guitar Night tour, including Lulo Reinhardt (great grandson of jazz legend Django), Italy’s Luca Stricagnoli and Brazil’s Chrystian Dozza.
“This January will mark my 50th year of playing slide guitar, also marking 38 years of teaching,” said Bhattacharya.
“I don’t have many lives, but I have so many great students all over the world ranging from direct students who have eaten in my kitchen to those who have learned from my recordings. We all give something to the world and I wanted to give something to the world of guitar.”
While not the first Indian classical slide guitarist, Bhattacharya took the style to new levels. The 54 year-old penned the first syllabus on technical and musical methods in the style and has also played a key role in the develop- ment of his “trinity of slide guitars” — 24-string chaturangi, 14-string gandharvi and four-string anandi — each possessing their own unique tonal and playing qualities.
“In 1978, I was a 15-year-old with a six-string lap steel guitar and no point of reference of how to move the hands and bar faster than fingers on a sitar to play ragas, with no reference even how to begin to understand the possibilities,” he said.
“That pioneering work wasn’t easy, with no YouTube or online coach and living in a village where even electricity was intermittent. But now with the 22-stringed instrument I’ve developed, there is an incredible oneness to the art.”
Bhattacharya has his own factory making these instruments and selling them all over the world. But when he comes to Vancouver to play, he’ll be sporting an axe made by local luthier Michael Dunn. This very global nature of guitar-makers supplying the market demand for these unique instruments is a fair indicator of how much influence Bhattacharya has had upon players such as Saltspring Island’s bluesman Harry Manx to contemporaries such as jazz legend John McLaughlin, Nashville session ace Jerry Douglas and global gui-
tar technician Bob Brozman. Two recordings with Brozman, Mahima and Calcutta Slide Guitar, Vol. 3, both ranked in the Top 10 of the world music charts and Bhattacharya’s 2009 album, Calcutta Chronicles, was Grammy-nominated.
“You know I remember Bob showing up at my front door with only a few rupees to his name and so much passion,” he said. “We found such instant common ground in how the Hawaiian brotherhood and its music from the ’20s and ’30s used the same kind of slow gliding glissando and working from one note to another. That has led me to my coming recording of the music of my Tau Moe.”
A fan of the Hawaiian slide style since his earliest memories, Bhattacharya has collaborated with academics at the University of Hawaii to study how Moe and his wife, singer Rose Moe, had lived in Calcutta during 1941-47, where they made many recordings and concerts touring the Asian subcontinent extensively. Mr. Moe’s star student, Garney Nyss, became India’s leading slide-guitar artist and an influence on Bhattacharya’s work.
“My guru, Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra, the leading slide-guitar artist of his day and a disciple of Sarod maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, introduced guitar as an Indian classical instrument,” said Bhattacharya. “I have been blessed to continue its development and my own learning all along the years. To achieve something like the life I have been blessed with coming from what I do is most certainly the ultimate achievement for any musician.”
And here I was thinking it was the mansions, sports cars and so on.