Born in 1963 to musically inclined parents, Pandit
Debashish Bhattacharya was a prodigy of Indian music, taking up the guitar in its newest incarnations as an Indian classical instrument. Playing for All India Radio by age four,
Bhattacharya developed his personal style over the next 20 years or so, studying under the father of Indian classical guitar,
Brij Bhushan Kabra, as well as vocalist
Ajoy Chakrabarty and
Ali Akbar Khan. He was given the President of India award in 1984 at the age of 21. From there, he went on to work developing the Hawaiian slide guitar into a more Indian instrument, adding chikaris and sympathetic strings, and eventually coming out with a 24-string instrument based on the old Hawaiian six-string. This is universally regarded as the highest form of the slide guitar's development anywhere, making
Bhattacharya one of the masters of the instrument, especially when considering his amazing abilities in playing Indian forms on it. Since gaining renown, he's worked on a number of guitar tours and multicultural projects, most notably with
John McLaughlin's
Shakti and a number of projects with slide guitar master
Bob Brozman. In 2003
Bhattacharya released
Mahima with
Brozman, fusing Hawaiian and Indian music, which raised his global profile exponentially. Between 2004 and 2009 he was prolific, releasing no less than ten albums including the widely celebrated Love's Dawn, Til Death Do Us Part,
Calcutta Slide Guitar: Vol. 3, Raga Pahadi Jhinjhoti with
Swapan Chaudhuri, and
Calcutta Chronicles: Indian Slide-Guitar Oddyssey (which earned him both a Grammy nomination and a BBC Award. He toured and taught at various universities between 2010-2012.
Bhattacharya resumed recording in 2013 with the solo
Madeira: If Music Could Intoxicate, and
Beyond the Ragasphere on Riverboat; the latter was recorded with friends including drummer
Jeff Sipe, guitarists
Jerry Douglas and
John McLaughlin and keyboardist Raja Narayan Dev. Two years later, Riverboat issued his
Slide Guitar Ragas from Dusk til Dawn, followed in 2017 by an ensemble recording entitled
Hawaii to Calcutta: A Tribute to Tau Moe. ~ Adam Greenberg