Renowned slide guitarist Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya is all set to perform at LaLaLand Festival in Amsterdam on July 8-9. He is returning to the Netherlands after a gap of four years, since his performance at The Bimhuis in 2019. This will be the two-time Grammy-nominated musician and BBC award winner’s tribute to renowned music collector and curator Felix van Lamsweerde, who was instrumental in taking the flavours of Indian classical music to the Netherlands. He invited Bhattacharya to perform at as many as 14 concerts as the ambassador of Indian classical music on the slide guitar across the Netherlands in early 2000s. Their friendship only grew stronger. Here’s what the slide guitarist told t2 over email.
You are returning to the Netherlands after four years. How elated are you?
I first performed in the Netherlands in 2004 at Het Concertgebouw, Tropentheater and other venues, culminating in a tour of 14 concerts and the privilege of encountering Felix van Lamsweerde, the mix of Dutch and French audience and their unique appreciation of Indian music and culture. That made my first venture in the Netherlands unforgettable. It is indeed an utmost honour to keep coming back and especially this time when the festival is dedicated to him.
What are the pieces you are going to play at the LaLaLand Festival?
I will be playing all three of my inventions: Chaturangui, Pushpa Veena and Anandi. The repertoire is divided into two parts — the first part will include Anandi Bhattacharya and Pandit Subhasis Bhattacharya on the tabla, as we perform a duet/ jugalbandi of vocals and Pushpa Veena. We are thinking of Raag bihag, Bageshree, Kaushik dhwani and Jhinjhoti for our evening concerts and Raag nat bhairav and Bhatiyar for our morning concerts. We will be performing some award-winning compositions too (from Anandi’s album Joys Abound), including Maya’s dream (Kalavati) and Jai Ganesh (Raag Gawati).
Lamsweerde had an unwavering passion for Indian music and was instrumental in taking Indian music to the Netherlands.
Mr. Felix had been instrumental in presenting, popularising and initiating the culture of Indian music in the Netherlands since the 1960s; he was a connoisseur of Indian music and culture. His work inspired me to propagate Indian music beyond my capacity as an artiste and present Indian music in a way that truly gives listeners a true vision of what the history of music and its evolution represent.
You have worked with Lamsweerde at many concerts....
The camaraderie and friendship Mr Felix and I shared extended far beyond our working relationship. After my debut tour in Amsterdam, he retired from his position at the Tropen Institute. However, that was only the beginning of our friendship. Whether it was the diverse styles and repertoires of gharanas and the andaaz of my grand gurus or his enthusiasm for playing his rare collection of records, we never ran out of topics and discoveries, and the addas were endless. Lamsweerde’s generosity of spirit and his love for Indian music were attested innumerable times in his zeal for helping Indian classical music artistes in any way he could. Since 2004, whenever I returned, he had never missed a single concert of mine and our friendship had blossomed through the years.
Tell us about the nuances of the Hindustani slide guitar, the iconic Pushpa Veena and the playing techniques.
The invention of Pushpa Veena occurred over 40 years after my first design of the Chaturangui circa 1978. Both instruments could not be more distinct in their sound, personalities, and, more importantly, the intention from which they emerged as ideas.
The Hindustani slide guitar or Chaturangui has a discernible timbre, one that I achieved through many modifications to bring it to the sound of the human voice singing classical music as close as I could. When we think of Indian music in its evolution as a performance, we think of gayaki — the nuance, the drama. My intention was to achieve that on the instrument. The instrument has a vibrant jawari that creates a rainbow of overtones from the vibration of the sympathetic strings making the timbre sound akin to a sitar.
My unique picking style often gives way to the sound of sarod too on the instrument. I also modified the placement of the chikari (rhythm strings of middle and high octave) to the front, besides shifting the tarab (sympathetic) strings from being under the main strings to having their own bridge connecting to the tuning keys alongside the periphery of the body. This not only facilitated the gayaki of vocal music on an instrument in terms of gamakas, meends, and murkis but also enhanced the ability to perform jor and jhaala on the slide guitar at par with that of the performance of a sitar and sarod, for the first time in the history of Indian music.
Having experienced and explored the scope of both ‘world music’ in Indian music and ‘Indian music’ in world music, Pushpa Veena came to me as an idea. The sound of this instrument sums up my life as a world-music artiste, innovator, and, most importantly, an Indian classical musician. The timbre is a blend of many instruments, including the American banjo, the Afghani rubab, the Iranian tar, the Moroccan oud, the Japanese shamisen, the Chinese guzheng, and, most importantly, the sarod. This instrument is perhaps the result of having witnessed the way Indian music is received worldwide.
You were born into a family of musicians. If you could tell us a bit about your early life.
I come from a lineage of scholars and musicians. However, since the Partition, neither of my parents had been able to pursue music as they had left their homes in Bangladesh and come to West Bengal for a livelihood. My childhood was filled with music. We were required to practise for hours, regardless of the circumstances. Practising music was joyful and also a discipline. Days, months, and years passed in the presence of my parents and gurus, practising, exploring and listening to the greats. We gave it our all without any worry about what it would bring. It was the greatest privilege of our time to not be so overwhelmed by connectivity, the news of the world and the constant distractions. It was a relatively easy time to be present, focused and creative.
Of all the award-winning compositions from your extensive repertoire, which one is the closest to your heart?
A Mystical Morning from the album Beyond the Ragasphere in collaboration with John McLaughlin is undoubtedly the closest to my heart!
What challenges do you face each time you blend Indian classicism and the guitar?
To tell you the truth, the biggest struggle of my music and innovative path has been the ignorance or small-mindedness of listeners. The guitar is a Western instrument and there is no doubt about it, but so is the violin, or the mandolin. It was a huge challenge for me to elevate the performance on the instrument — not only from the perspective of tonality through engineering but also from the perspective of developing my skill on the instrument relentlessly to play it perhaps even beyond ‘at par’, in terms of displaying inhuman finesse and skill as would be heard on the sitar or the sarod.
The community of Indian slide guitarists around the world owes a huge debt to my guru, Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabraji for making the bold leap of playing Indian music on a Western instrument. It took a really long time for people to accept the idea of Indian music on the guitar. For years, in spite of being a top-grade radio artiste at All India Radio, my performances would be announced as, ‘... you have been listening to raag so and so, or sarod/sitar by Debashish Bhattacharya’. Innovations need time to catch on, and as long as the legacy is carried on through able performers, it is only onward and upward.
The slide guitar is not a legacy instrument, that is true; it has not lived and breathed as an Indian instrument for a century. But it is certainly the only instrument that has evolved for over four decades to serve Indian music, with utmost loyalty to its tradition and values.
You have developed new instruments, including the Gandharvi and Anandi, and opened up a new genre of music in your lifetime.
Gandharvi emerged as an idea around 1985-86. I was taken with the single-tone sound of a Rudra Veena or Saraswati Veena, and wanted to find a tonality on the guitar that would not only give the depth of the strings but also retain the drone-like quality of the sympathetic strings, and so I created a blueprint with paired strings/ double strings. Et voila! The Gandharvi was born. Gandharvi has a very pure spiritual sound. I played it with John McLaughlin on a track that he had written and named Raju from his album Floating Point.
Anandi, the slide ukulele with four strings, produces enormous amplitude and resonance that are incredible for high-energy pieces, especially suitable in collaboration with flamenco music for which I developed a specific picking to complement the music.
What are your upcoming albums.
My next releases include a pure, classical, premier album that focuses on spotlighting the Pushpaveena, an electronica album that features electric guitar with digital soundscapes, an album comprising my own poetry and music and Tagore’s poetry and music, among many others, and a father-daughter duet album with my daughter Anandi Bhattacharya. These four will be released over the course of two years.