3: Calcutta Slide Guitar
A hypnotic music with a thousand years of tradition behind it, Indian raga is typically played on sitar and tabla. Debashish Bhattacharya is most definitely a part of the raga tradition, but he continues it by playing three uniquely modified guitars: two are composites of a guitar with droning sitar strings and one is a sort of slide ukulele. While the instruments look strange, Bhattacharya (who has achieved Pandit, or master, status) gets that classic sitar sound out of them. Playing by using a unique three-finger picking style, the guitarist picks sitar-like bent notes, burrs, and leaps; he also gets a myriad of tones and accents with his slide (which he occasionally also uses to add a subtle delta blues flavor). He's often joined by his brother Subhasis on tabla, and the dialogue between them is telepathic. Definitely one of the more unusual traditional albums to come out of India, this features a musician finding his own path within the tradition with consummate musicianship and an innovative (third) eye toward the future. --Tad Hendrickson