HINDUSTANI SLIDE / BY MARK HUMPHREY
　 　 　
　 　 　
When George Harrison presented Vishwa Mohan Bhatt a Grammy Award for his recording with Ry Cooder, A Meeting By The River,Bhatt gestured towards his teacher,Ravi Shankar,who was sitting in the front row. "This music,"Bhatt said,"is a small part of what he has given me." That's the graceful way an Indian classical musician accepts something like a Grammy:All honor is given to his guru, the transmitter of tradition.
　
The origins of India's music are traced to Vedic chants of Biblical antiquity.Over the centuries, the music has absorbed many foreign influences,such as those introduced by 16th-century Mogul countries and 19th-century Christian missionaries.Every foreign sound has, in time,become distinctly Indian,as have the instruments India's conquerors left behind. The sitar and sarod, for instance,may have evolved from the Persian setar and Afghani rebab.The violin has been returned to suit the music of India,which some scholars believe was the ancient source of Europe's bowedstring tradition.Given India's history of musical adaptation and assimilation,it is little surprise that the latest instrument to be "Indianized"is the guitar.
　
The glides (meend) and ornaments (gamakas) central to Indian music are readily produced on guitar with a steel bar. Before World War II,this style of guitar playing was imported to India via recordings by Sol Hoopii,Joe Kaipo with Jimmie Rodgers,and others. Touring Hawaiian troupes inspired local imitators.Calcutta's Aloha Boys,formed in 1938,were often heard on All-India Radio.Within a generation,electric Hawaiian guitar had become an integral part of the Indian film scores.While this filmi music was disdained by connoisseurs of India's classical music,the connection between the classical Indian tradition and Hawiian guitar had been made.The song "Beat Chalat",from the 1953 film Ladki,opens with a brief meditative slide guitar line reminiscent of a slow alap,the introductory section of a raga.There was good reason for this sound to eventually integrate itself into India's classical tradition: The guitar may have been foreign to India,but the practice of changing a string's pitch with a "slider"was not.Both South India's gottuvadyam and North India's vichitra vina used this technique. India's slide tradition may have even played a role in the Hawaiian guitar's early development.
　
Among the contenders for the crown of first Hawaiian-style guitarist is Gabriel Davion.Hawaiian composer Charles E.King, who met him in 1884,described him as "a young man ... born in India,kidnapped by a sea captain and finally brought to Honolulu.... This Davion attracted a lot of attention because he had a new way of playing the guitar.All the playing was done[slide style] on one string." King probably didn't know this was a typically Indian approach to a member of the "plucked lute"family.Had Davion transferred gottuvadyam technique to guitar? We will never know,but it's intriguing to speculate that a kidnapped Indian musician playing an instrument brought to the islands by Portuguese cowboys may have played a role in the invention of Hawaiian-style guitar!
　
Some 73 years after Davion's playing was reportedly a "sensational feature" of King Kalalaua's 1886 Jubilee, Brij Bhushan Kabra gave the first concert of Indian classical "slide style" guitar music.Born into a prominent family in Jodhpur in 1937,Kabra shocked his father,a classical arts patron who had studied sitar with the legendary Inayat Khan,by taking up a Weatern instrument,a Hofner archtop acquired for 250 rupees in 1958.Kabra's elder brother,Damodar Lal,had studied sarod with Ali Akabar Khan,and shouldn't he follow suit? But Kabra insisted he was serious about the guitar,and his father challenged him to prove it by offering to present him in concert in one year.Intense coaching and encouragement from Ali Akabr Khan helped make the concert a success.As Kabra told Henry Kaiser in 1985 Guitar Player interview: "The guitar was not simply a novelty anymore;it had to stand against any other instrument on its own."
　
Kabra's breakthrough album of Hindustani guitar.
　
Vihwa Mohan Bhatt,15 years Kabra's junior and from the same region,points out that before Brij Bhushan,the guitar was considered suitable only for light music and film songs: "Then after Brij Bhushanji,I have tried my best to establish this as a solo concert instrument.Before,they were having a very wrong impression about it.I have tried my best to break that image entirely."
　
Bhatt,who began his concert career in 1971,has become the best-known ambassador of Hindustani guitar."My main aim is to promote Indian classical music.Our whole family in Jaipur is devoted to classical music." His father,Pandit Monmohan Bhatt, was a renowned vocal teacher.In his youth Bhatt studied sitar and violin with his brothers.The guitar entered his life via a German visitor to his father's music school. "When he was going back,"Bhatt recalls, "my father asked him to sell his guitar.We bought that instrument,and it was lying there,and all the time I was thinking about it.It was sort of tempting me to do something.Then I just took it out and started playing.I didn't have a proper steel rod and picks to play.I just started playing with some piece of metal."Bhatt was 16 at the time.
　
"I had no fixed ideas about music or the instrument,"Kabra told Kaiser. "I developed my technique according to the music I wanted to play by trial and error,and it kept getting better. The only question was how far I could draw on my own reserves, how much I could learn to really bring out of the instrument.But the instrument never said no."Bhatt insists he developed his technique on his own. "I saw Brij Bhushan Kabra,"he admits, "but I didn't have much opportunity to learn from anyone.I have tried to create my own style of playing,which is based on gayaki ang,the vocal singing style,plus the tantrakari style ,the instrumental style.I have tried to make a style of my own,to assimilate the sound and techniques of sarod ,sitar,and vina, plus gayaki ang."
　
For the past 14 years,Bhatt has studied with Ravi Shankar,an association he's very proud of.Shankar,in turn,credits Bhatt's accomplishments: "Although guitar is a foreign instrment,he has a tremendous command over it.He has given it a new dimension by merging the sound and style of guitar,sitar,and sarod.The effect of his playing is unique."
　
Shankar had studied with the legendary Allaudin Khan,disciple of Ustad Wazir Khan,a powerful figure who transmitted the medieval devotional song style called dhrupad through the bin,a large plucked lute that once was the quintessential Hindustani classical stringed instrument.The court musician who played it,the binkar,passed their knowledge to their sons and carefully chosen disciples in a lineage called gharana,or family. "I am fortunate to have this binkar gharana training from him,"says Bhatt. "They used to play the same thing as dhrupad singers,and that trainig I got from my guruji,Pandit Ravi Shankar."
　
Within the gharana,musicians pursue rigorous training via an intense guru/disciple relationship.Allaudin Khan's lineage is the Senia Maihar Gharana,the tradition in which Bhatt and Kabra have trained.The youngest disciple of this gharana to distinguish himself as a Hindustani guitarist is Debashish Bhattachaya,who first toured America in '93. Bhattachaya embarked on five years of study with Kabra in '86,two years after he became the first guitarist to receive the prestigious President's Award of Indis.
　
Born in Bengal in 1963, Bhattachaya was a child prodigy. His parents were singers,and his mother brought home a Hawaiian guitar when he was three.He was soon playing it,and before age seven was studying with Calcutta*s Sri Rajat Nandi,who taught him Western notation and hits such as theme from Bonanza. "I took two years of lessons from him," Bhattachaya recalls,"and then left because I didn*t find much in it."Even so,he still informally plays songs such as "Spanish Fandango,"a waltz rooted in the 19th-century parlor guitar tradition.
　
Like Bhatt, Bhattachaya was never out of earshot of Hindustani classical music. "My brother Subhashish and my sister Sutapa are musicians today,"he says. "We have basically learned Indian classical vocal music from our parents.It comes through generation after generation.I have learned this guitar in a very natural way. I don*t know how I have learned it,because at the time I didn't find anybody to play Indian classical guitar.Maybe that was good for me.I have evolved my own techniques and everything in a natural wat." Bhattachaya also studied harmonium and sitar,and he continues his study of Hindustani vocal music with Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty. "In our music,"he says, "vocal music is most important,and the stringed instruments have followed that way.To reach the maximum nearness of vocal music is very inportant."
　
One of the legacies of the old dhrupad vocal style is the alap portion of a performance,anarrhythmic and freely improvised explotion of the contours of a raga.Kabra told Kaiser: "For the most important part of Indian music,the alap,the guitar is one of the most ideally suited instruments."But first some technical problems had to be solved. "I found that in playing the alap, "Kabra continued, "every time you shift from one string to another,the continuity of the note is broken.So I made the first string the main playing string,so that I could play two octaves without a break.Then the second string I turned in Panchama [the fifth,commonly called Pa].Then the third string is the same as the first string[an octave lower].So as far as the playing part is concerned,I'm using only three strings,and it goes three octaves,which is good enough for our music---it has a complete range.Basically,our music is based on vocal music.That is the most inportant aspect of the alap---the modulations that the human voice can do,the grace notes it can produce---and that can be achieved very well on the guitar."
　
Indian music works around a fixed tonic center,called Shadja or simply Sa,which for Hindustani guitarists is D.Why D? "It sounds best in D,"says Bhatt. "The string is tight enough.We place a steel rod on it,so if it is loose,then it goes down and is out of tune because of the pressure of the rod.We need the string to be a little tight." Sitarists,on the other hand,usually play around a tonic center of C.
　
Like Kabra,Bhatt uses three melodic strings,which he usually tunes D,A,D.Three strings correspond in size to the high-E,B,and D strings of a conventional guitar,except that the lower D is an unknownd brass string.("The wound brass strings were creating too much of a racket when I slid the bar over them,"Kabra told Kaiser.) Bhatt and Bhattachaya retune yhe second string if a particular raga emphasezes another degree of the scale,such as the fourth (called Madhyama or simply Ma)over the fifth.Some ragas have a sharp fourth(Tivra-Ma),in which the second string becomes G#, while others with a natural fourth(Shudda-Madhyma)require the second string to be turned to G.
　
Kabra had another problem to solve for playing the rapidly pulsing conclusion of a raga,the jhala,which is usually punctuated on sitar and sarod by swift strokes on high tonic drone strings called chikaris.(Chikaris are somewhat comparable to the banjo's high,bass-side fifth string.)Kabra added a chikari to the bass side of his guitar,set on a post midway up the neck in the manner of the sitar.Bhatt has followed Kabra's example,picking the rapid-fire jhala with his thumb across his chikari and drone strings. Bhattachaya,who prefers to use his index and middle fingers for jhala,has reversed the usual order of chikari on his guitar. "In the Indian system,"he says,"people play chikari in the back.It is easy to strum,because they hold the indtrument perpendicuarly,not horizontally.But if I play lapstyle guitar and the chikari is in the rear,I found it is not advantageous. So to facilitate the rhythm patterns,I put the chikari in front[on the treble side]instead of in the rear.This chikari can produce the first jhala on the guitar."
　
While Kabra feels the guitar doesn*t need sympathetic strings,Bhatt favors them."When I played the same thing which I used to olay on the sitar,"Bhatt says,"I noticed that the sound is a little bit lonely.It was not so pleasing as sitar,because sitar has sympathetic strings,which is very important for Indian classical music,for the resonance.It gives us vibrations."Bhatt experimented with adding sympathetic strings before taking his huitar to a sitar maker to have it done properly. Bhattachaya likewise added sympathetic strings to a Hofner given him by Kabra,who was "strongly opposed to my doing all these things. " Both Bhatt and Bhattachaya have 12 sympathetic strings supported by a small bridge(ghurac) comparable to the secondary bridge used for a sitar*s sympathetic strings.Slightly convex,the bridge contacts the strings over a wider surface than typical of Western bridges.This evokes the nasal buzz and harmonic overtones characteristic of Indian strings."The science behind the resonance is the same as sitar,"notes Bhattachaya.These strings are tuned according to the notes of the raga being played,and while most ragas have a maximum of seven notes,the additional strings allow for an octave tonic,as well as sundry flats and the solo sharp in this system,the fourth interval.
　
Whereas Bhatt has three melodic strings, Bhattachaya uses five. To the left of his melodic strings,Bhatt has four drone strings and one chikari,while Bhattachaya has three drones and two chikari.Kabra reportedly uses his three bass-side strings as drones that are tuned according to the important intervals of the raga being performed.
　
All three Hindustani guitarists wear conventional thumbpicks and pluck with their index and middle fingers.Kabra wera wire sitar plectrums(mizrab),while Bhatt and Bhattachaya favor conventional metal fingerpicks.They use light steel bars as slide,and prefer archtop guitars.kabra plays a Gibson Super 400;Bhattacharya uses a Hofner.Bhatt once played a Hofner,but wasn't happy with its tone.Christened the Mohan Vina,his current instrument was made in 1987 by Calcutta's Bhabha Sindhu Biswas."This was his first piece,"Bhatt recalls."Very thin top.I got about 12 more guitars like this,but I liked the sound of this one so much it's still with me."
　
More Hindustani guitarists will surely emerge as disciples of Kabra,Bhatt,and Bhattachaya come into their own. Bhattachaya,who is affiiiiliated with Calcutta*s Sangeet Research Academy,says he hopew to " encourage students of guitar not to only play filmi music,but to play classical music,always the treasure of any nation."Just 35 years have passed since Kabra first publicly explored the possibilities of Hindustani guitar at about the same time Santo & Johnny had an international hit with "Sleep Walk."The planets were favorably aligned for slide guitar then,and appear to be again.