Riverboat Rec.
Debashish Bhattacharya : 3 : Calcutta slide-guitar (IND,2005)*****
Debashish Bhattacharya is considered as a highly distinctive master of the Indian slide-guitar -also called the Indian lap steel Hawaiian guitar-, who has devoted a continuous research to make the guitar sound like the best possible instrument suitable for Indian raga. He not only developed his own technique towards perfection, but he tried also to improve the guitar itself for the use in raga. His basic education started at an impossible young age in a musical family, resulting in his first concert of lap steel guitar at the age of 4. Brij B. Kabra before him, already changed the slide guitar making it more suitable for playing Indian music. Debashish studied with him from 1984 for ten years for a minimum of 12 hours a day. In his turn he started putting additional resonating strings and drone strings to his instrument. Later he developed a three-finger picking technique making for an ability to bring speed to his playing and a creativity with hypnotic patterns. He designed 9 different slide-guitars through the years but resumed all his assembled aspirations in a series he called the trinity of guitars, connected with the Indian cosmology trinity or three eyes or visions, also representing past, present and future. These instruments are firstly the 22 stringed Chatturangui, a guitar with four additional tones and 12 sympathetic strings, secondly the 14-string Gandharvi, sounding somewhere between veena, sarangi, saz, 12-string guitar and a Spanish flamenco guitar, and lastly the Anandi, a slide ukulele, with a clear, somewhat funny tone.
The recording shows all kinds of varied and subtle variations of the raga slide-guitars, with different moods and concentrations. Like all raga’s this music can be experienced and seen on various levels. There are different raga’s for each time period connected with a mood and qualities that easily become transcendental when one follows the basic principle disciplined improvisation. The last track “Maha Shakti" obviously is build up as a duet with tabla to become the ‘energetic’ highlight, presenting some kind of “cosmic energy”, with a more directly presented and noticeable effect. To hear all the variations, also of the guitars, one listens best with some deep concentration, or by moving his listening process angle with each listen, to gain at least some aspects and experience of the levels that this infinite music can reach.
Highly recommended.
Small review with audio :
