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The guitar may be the world's most ubiquitous instruments, but it has seldom been associated with India music, which has its own ancient strings to call upon. Intriguingly, Bhattacharya plays classical Indian ragas on a slide guitar, or, rather, on three self-designed guitars, ranging from a giant 22-stringed model to a tiny ukulele-like instrument that has just four strings.
He coaxes timbres out of them that sound similar to Indian instruments such as the sitar, sarod, sarangi and vena. But listen closely and the tone is undeniably different, with a modern sparkle that is pleasingly easy on western ears, yet without sacrificing the spiritual and contemplative nature of the Indian classical tradition.
Each instrument possesses a sound of its own, from the joyous innocence of the smallest to the complexity of the largest, on which he uses a unique three-finger picking technique that gives him lightning speed creates hypnotic flurries o notes that it would take a battery of special effects to produce from a western Guitar.
The results are as beautiful as they are extraordinary.
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