Saturday, April 5 at 7:30 pm
DEBASHISH BHATTACHARYA: HINDUSTANI SLIDE GUITAR
at Calvary Church, 48th Street and Baltimore Avenue
"You will likely never hear better acoustic slide playing than this.
Using the centuries-old raga tradition, Bhattacharya takes the
listener to a place of deep emotional expression beyond the boundaries
of time." Henry Kaiser, Acoustic Guitar Magazine
Pandit 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.
At this performance, Debashish Bhattacharya will be accompanied by his
brother Subhasis on tabla and by his sister, vocalist Sutapa
Bhattacharjee.
Subhasis Bhattacharya, Debashish’s younger brother, is a leader of his
generation of Indian percussionists. He started to make his presence
felt in the music scene from childhood as a promising tabla player
trained by teachers Sri Prabir Bhattacharya and Pt. Shyamal Bose. Now
considered a master player, he continues to study with the senior
tabla maestro Pandit Anindo Chatterjee. He has regularly performed in
every major Indian music festival, and has recorded four albums with
Debashish and seven albums with Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty.
Subhasis first toured outside of India in 1996 with Debashish and Bob
Brozman. His skill and flexibility as percussionist on several
instruments, rhythm arranger, and vocalist have since been heard on
subsequent overseas tours in the USA, Canada, South Africa, Greece,
Kuwait, Bangladesh, and Nepal. A leading studio musician in India, he
has begun creating and leading large percussion ensembles, and his
arranging skills are essential to the music on this album, as an equal
participant in its creation. With meticulously tuned hand drums, he
played intricate rhythms, plus melodic parts inside the rhythm
section. Creating percussion landscapes by playing several instruments
on multiple tracks gave Subhashis a sense of liberty, yielding one
creative explosion after another.
Vocalist Sutapa Bhattacharjee, the sister of Debashish and Subhasis,
has clearly inherited the vocal genes of generations of Bhattacharyas.
With a master’s degree in music, she has spent her life as a vocalist
and teacher of music. Capable of singing fluently in the 10 most well-
known languages in India, she sings most genres of Indian music, from
classical and semi-classical to traditional folk songs to film songs,
both classic and contemporary. On tours with Debashish and Subhasis,
she has astounded audiences and musicians alike by matching
Debashish’s lightning-fast guitar melodies note-for-note with her
voice. Her 2002 release, JETE JETE, placed among the top 10 Bangla
albums of the year, positioning Sutapa foremost among artists in her
genre in India.
Extensive streaming audio recordings can be found at:
http://www.herschelfreemanagency.com/debashish/debashish.html
For more information on Debashish Bhattacharya:
http://www.debashishbhattacharya.com/
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MORE CONCERTS TO BE ANNOUNCED!
For more information on Crossroads Music:
http://www.crossroadsconcerts.org or 215-729-1028
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Crossroads Music's programming is in part supported by grants from the
5-County Arts Fund (a Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts program of the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts), the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and
the Samuel S. Fels Fund.
