Hindustani Slide: Indian Classical Guitar – Various

North India’s classical music, often called Hindustani as distinct from South India’s Karnatak classical music, is one of the world’s richest musical traditions. Its highly developed system of melody (raga) and rhythm (tala) provides a framework for breathtaking improvisatory flights in the hands of such masters as sitarist Ravi Shankar and sarodist Ali Akbar Khan. India’s traditional stringed instruments have recently been joined by the guitar as a means to express the riches of Hindustani music. The slide approach to guitar has become a medium for the purest Hindustani music since it has such an uncanny knack for appoximating the instrument that Indians hold in highest esteem — the human voice.

The son of Hindustani vocalists, Debashish Bhattacharya began playing guitar at age three, and has become one of India’s leading concert guitarists. Accompanied by tabla master Kumer Bose, a frequent accompanist of Ravi Shankar, Bhattacharya’s performance captures both the subtlety and astonishing virtuosity inherent in the Hindustani tradition. The fact that he does so on a guitar “Indianized” with sympathetic strings and a unique placement of the rhythmic chikari strings, has led Bhattacharya to christen his instrument the Dev Veena. One of Calcutta’s best known concert halls, Max Muller Bhawan, was the site of this performance.