CH – Raga CDs of the Months (06/2011): midday ragas (noon/early afternoon)

The Raag Sarang, a noon raga, is performed by Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt on an Indian Guitar, which has been modificated by himself. The noon ragas within the Sarang family are clustered within the emotion system (rasas) as adbhuta (= amazement).

date of broadcasting …

27th June 2011 – 10:00 p.m. CET | 04:00 p.m. EST @ Radio RaSA (CH)
(premiere: 24th July 2006 @ Tide 96.0 FM)
broadcasting plan | streaming (Internet Radio & Mobile Radio) | podCast

Vishwa Mohan Bhatt as a Grammy Award Winner belongs the extra ordinary music maestros of India. He was disciple of Ravi Shankar, the biggest musician in Indian Classical Music (Hindustani Music) nowadays.

The sliding along the strings, the glissando, is typically for many different Indian instruments, e.g. Sarod or Sitar. They all are constructions with vibrating resonance strings, the same as the slide guitar designed by Mohan Bhatt, so called “Mohan Vina”.

Mohan Bhatt has meet the guitar in a curious way. In 1967 a German student left behind a Spanish guitar in the music school of his father Krishna Mohan Bhatt, a sitar maestro and one of the first three pupils with Ravi Shankar in 1949/50. Bhatt refitted the guitar, did experiments with the structure of this instrument and some left hand / right hand techniques. Least he modified it what we call today “Mohan Vina”. It’s a hybrid of the classical Spanish guitar and the sitar.