Mad Bhatts Beyond The Ragadome

Looking for some peace of mind this week, some stillness to quell my churning soul I found myself reaching for the perfect LP. Debashish Bhattacharya & Friends Beyond The Ragasphere.

My folks gave me an appreciation of Indian classical music as a kid, I was taken to see a good few performances of it* and we had various Ravi Shankar albums that I remember being played occasionally at home. So the sound of a sitar, or tabla** weren’t just some added ‘exotic’ textures on various 60’s pop records to me.

Disregarding 90’s diasporic talents like Talvin Singh and Asian Dub Foundation^ the 1537 is pretty bereft of music from Asia, or was until I bought Beyond The Ragasphere not long after it was released in 2013.

I was lured to purchase by the cover picture of a gentle faced chap playing a jazzy slide guitar in orbit. That the LP featured John McLaughlin was another incentive for me. You know what a sucker I am for sleevenotes too … it came home with me. I was expecting some pretty far out raga-driven meanderings and meditations, which was not quite what I got.

Debashish Bhattacharya took up slide guitar at the age of 3. He made his national radio debut playing slide at the age of 4. Being a bit of a slow starter he didn’t design his own unique instrument (consequently inventing a whole new genre of music) until he was 15^^. For brevity’s sake I will gloss over a plethora of similarly stellar achievements only to add that like all the most creative musicians he has sought out and played with musicians from disparate backgrounds and genres.

Beyond The Ragasphere is 34 minutes long^* on vinyl, on download and streaming it’s longer, but badly diluted as the five tracks here are the best ones, sequenced well.

Taking up the whole of a side, ‘A Mystical Morning’ opens with street sounds of Kolkata recorded by Bhattacharya and McLaughlin, but particularly with the morning siren of a jute factory on the banks of the River Ganges – which is a dead ringer for the beginning of Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’; trust me.

The begins with a gentle ruminative tranquillity, stretching out and feeling its way into the titular morning. Then roughly 7 minutes in someone activates ‘space jazz mode’ and we are treated to some typically expressive exploratory playing from McLaughlin and then best of all to a wonderful switchbacking rollercoasting glide to the end with both guitarists trading licks. It’s a great way to spend 16:05 of your life.

First track of Beyond The Ragasphere is the excellently tuneful and funky ‘Kirwani One.5+8.Five’. American drummer Jeff Snipe plays on this track as does Bhattacharya’s daughter Anandi and the tabla player Bickram Ghosh, who played with George Harrison. I love the flickering melodies and pop tunefulness which light up this playful, shape-shifting track.

Second track ‘JD2 Pillusion’ begins as sun rises on a desert scene, that may owe as much to Arizona as it does to Rajasthan. A ‘pilu’ is a light, classical raga the sleevenotes inform me and the guest presence of Jerry Douglas playing a resophonic Dobro guitar aids a wonderful blending of themes and notes. As always Bhattacharya’s gentility shines through his playing and this track gifts us another beautiful sunrise.

Lastly we head to ‘Indospaniola’ courtesy of flamenco guitarist Adam del Monte. Slightly inevitably it has some of the qualities of Miles Davis’ achingly beautiful Spanish-tilted cuts. The slight, almost indistinguishable Indian drone that pulses in the background sets off the beautifully resonant playing of both guitarists in the foreground. My only quibble is that this should also have been 16:05 long as it sounds like both players are getting warmed up by the end of the cut and I suspect there was a lot more joy to draw from this particular well.

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The title of Beyond The Ragasphere is I think a misnomer, by reaching out to musicians of varying heritage I think Debashish Bhattacharya has proven that the ragasphere is as all encompassing as our atmosphere.

I may have overused the word already today, but there is something joyous in listening to such complementary musicians creating and playing together. One can believe in good playing an LP like this, which is not a thing to be undervalued or dismissed in our troubled times.

Buy this LP, you may need it sometime, like I did this week.

1254 Down.

PS: This is just brilliant, featuring his daughter on vocals and brother on tabla. I love the sheer joy in this performance as well as the fact the man doesn’t look a day over twenty four:

PPS: sleevenotes can do little wrong for me, I love ’em as you know. However, I need to express a minor snark here Mr McLaughlin is not American, unless in terms of residence, he’s from Doncaster.

PPPS: the post title came from playing around with the word ‘ragasphere’ and finding it sounded a touch like an 80’s action flick. Mr Bhattacharya is anything but mad, but I cannot resist a pun.

*some of which hit and some missed.

**can you believe spell check didn’t recognise that word? get it added illuminati.

^Rafi’s Revenge is an excellent LP from a band who were absolutely incendiary live.

^^by way of comparison at this age I smelled like a goat, wanted to be an elven warrior when I grew up and was obsessed with (name redacted to spare the poor lady all the press interest that would inevitably follow) to a frankly unhealthy degree.

^*or 1.25 Van Halen’s, if you want a strict scientific measurement. To be strictly truthful the track ‘Ode To Love’ is the one which would add something extra to Beyond The Ragasphere.