by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

In 1966, at the age of three, Debashish Bhattacharya of Kolkatta, India came across an old Hawaiian slide guitar in the home of his highly musical, singing-oriented family. The instrument had enjoyed a brief period of novelty in India, but in the tiny hands of the young Bhattacharya, a whole new vista of possibility opened up.

A year later, he was performing on All India Radio, and in 1984, he received the President of India Award. Today, he’s an acknowledged pandit, or master, of the Hindustani slide guitar, composing magnificent ragas, performing worldwide with his brother and sister and collaborating with everyone from Zakir Hussain and Bob Brozman to pipa player Liu Fang and Montreal’s Ramachandra Borcar. Furthermore, Bhattacharya has carefully crafted no less than 19 custom slide guitars, tailored specifically for Indian musical traditions.

As high spirited as he is deeply spiritual, the charming and ebullient Bhattacharya graciously took the time to chat with the Mirror.

Mirror: Your compositions have a storytelling quality, more than other ragas I’ve heard. They seem to tell a tale without words.

Debashish Bhattacharya: Well, that is me! (laughs heartily) I’m a storyteller, I’m a story-maker. I’m a very imaginative person, from my childhood. Whenever I listen or play or learn any music, there is at the same time a second layer of image that goes into my brain. So it is not only the music I hear—I also see the picture of it. When I play that music, it comes automatically out. I don’t know what happened to me! (laughs uproariously)

M: For years, you’ve been developing the slide guitar to suit Indian ragas, and your own direction as an artist, and this has brought you to your Trinity—Chaturangui, Gandharvi and Anandi. Have you reached the end of your journey as an instrument builder, or will you continue to create new guitars?

DB: (laughs robustly) You got me, you got me, you got me red-handed, you know? (laughs expansively) Oooooh, my. Actually, right now, in my mind, I’m preparing for one more instrument, at least. I don’t know where I’ll stop! (laughs thunderously) I never started—if somebody started, planned, that I’ll make 19 or 21 guitars in my whole life, then you know the number when you stop. But I have never started—it was so spontaneous, it started at the very beginning of my life, in my childhood. It started, and developed and developed and developed. I added some chikarees—

M: The resonating strings, yes.

DB: —resonating strings in the back, and in the front a couple of rhythm strings, and that was so spontaneous, because I have never been told to do that by somebody else. I have been acting as if somebody was guiding me, from somewhere, a kind of power, you know? That was so spontaneous, you can only feel the touch of God, that something is going to happen—when you feel that, you get inspiration, and you are unstoppable. Nobody can stop you from there. That is the great blessing I have received all the time. All the time, I felt some good cause before I started working in a particular direction. Why I have arranged those strings, why I have slid a bar on those strings, why I have tuned the strings in that way, all has been guided by this spirit.

At Kola Note on Thursday, Oct. 19, 8:30 p.m., $23

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