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Ragas blend with jazz for a slide to freedom

Photo: Gopal Sunger

A rare fusion: Satvik Veena player Salil Bhatt (left) with Canadian guitar player and singer Doug Cox at the recording of their album ‘Slide to fredom’.

JAIPUR: A fusion music album featuring Jaipur-based Satvik Veena player Salil Bhatt and Canadian Guitar player and singer Dough Cox is making waves in the U.S. and Canada and is tipped to be a frontrunner for international music awards.

The album, “Slide to Freedom”, comprises eight melodies crafted by the fusion of Indian classical music and Western blues at Hayloft Studios in Edmonton, Canada, after a rigorous practice for the unique blend for a year. The album was released in March this year.

Salil Bhatt, 36-year-old son of the legendary musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, said here that he had attempted to blend ragas like Bhoopali, Aheer Bhairav and Jog with the slow melancholic jazz music of the Canadian singer.

“Among all the ragas, I found Raga Bageshwari most compatible with the blues. Together they have had a mesmerising impact on the listeners,” said Salil Bhatt.

He said the Satvik Veena, designed by him as a slide guitar with 20 strings, had proved to be the most suitable instrument for the fascinating musical collaboration.

Salil Bhatt claimed that the album, going by its ranking among the top ten charts by music critics, media and listeners in the U.S. and Canada, could be nominated for global awards such as Grammy, Juno Music Award and Canadian-American World Music Award, for 2008.

“I have recently returned from a tour of the U.S. where the executives of album producer Northern Blues Music informed me of the possibility of the collection being nominated for any of the prestigious awards,” said Salil Bhatt, while denying that he was lobbying for the coveted prizes.

Salil Bhatt’s father Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, who has made a couple of guest appearances in “Slide to Freedom”, had brought home the Grammy Award for his fusion performance on Mohan Veena with Ry Cooder in “A Meeting by the River” in 1994.

Bhatt Junior said he had adapted the style of his father to meet the requirements of fusion with Dough Cox, ensuring an amalgam of blues echoes and Indian classical music. “My desire to get nominated for the Grammy stems from the yearning to bring laurels to India after Pandit Ravi Shankar and Pandit Bhatt.” The fusion of East and West in the album has also been supported by the scintillating performance of tabla maestro Ramkumar Mishra.

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