Listen to Debashish Bhattacharya

Debashish Bhattacharya is perhaps the greatest slide guitarist in India. Born into a Kolkata (Calcutta) musical family in 1963, he began playing Hawaiian lap steel guitar at three, performed on All India Radio at four, and spent his childhood and adolescence studying Western guitar, sitar, esraj, and singing styles. At 21, he was the first slide guitarist to receive the President of India Award and became a disciple of Pandit Brij Bhushan Khabra, a pioneer of Indian slide guitar, with whom he studied for a decade. He has also studied with the eminent vocalist Ajoy Chakraborty and with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.

While Western audiences are most familiar with the use of slide guitar in Hindustani (North Indian) classical music through Ry Cooder’s collaborations with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, the instrument was first brought to India in the early 20th century by the influential Hawaiian guitarist Tau Moe. One of his students taught Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra, the pioneer who incorporated slide guitar into improvised ragas and eventually became Bhattacharya’s musical guru.

Bhattacharya himself is a major innovator, not only as a performer but also as a designer: his “Trinity of Guitars” includes a hollow-necked 22-string guitar with four additional tones, a 14-string guitar that combines features from the Western 12-string guitar with the veena, bowed sarangi and santoor (Persian hammered dulcimer), and a slide ukulele.

More information

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