Pandit Vishwa Mhatt, a North Indian classical musician, was born in Rajasthan, India in 1952. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt is one the most well-known shishyas (disciples), of Sitar shaman Ravi Shankar. He was born in Jaipur, Rajasthan, in July 1952. His family provided a lot of his musical education. Vishwa Mohan, his father Manmohan Bhatt was a teacher and Vishwa Mohan Bhattat learned from him the art of singing, compositions, and ragas. Bhatt initially didn’t intend to pursue a career as a musician. While studying violin and sitar, he prepared for the Indian civil service. He found a Spanish guitar left behind by a German student from Jaipur’s music school. Bhatt took it as his own and began to remodel it. He experimented with the instrument’s structure and left and right hand techniques as well as various objects that produce the slide sound. Bhatt modified the guitar by adding drone strings and eight sympathetic string to give it the Hawaiian slide guitar effect. This allowed him to achieve the sustained, slide-like notes of Indian classical music. The’mohan Veena’, named after him and Vina (or Veena), the generic Sanskrit name for a stringed instrument, was thus born. The instrument appears to be a mix of a sitar and a classical Spanish guitar. The Mohan Vina is a Western-style slide guitar. It uses sitar mizrabs (wirepicks), a thumb pick, and a polished stainless rod for the slide. Its combination of melody and drone, sympathetic strings, melody, melody, and Bhatt’s microtonal approach, to melody, places it in the Indian cosmos. He had been a recording artist in India since 1970. He had also toured and recorded abroad with Shankar, including the ambitious Inside The Kremlin album from 1989. His international breakthrough was with A Meeting By The River. This album, which he collaborated with American slide guitarist RyCooder, won a Grammy Award for Best World Music Album 1994. Bhatt wasn’t the first Indian to receive a Grammy Award. Bhatt’s album, along with other fusion and cross-cultural collaborations, is what is most well-known. However, exposure like his appearance at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2004, which was hosted by Eric Clapton allows for his unique approach to Indian classical music traditions to reach a wider audience. In 2002, he was awarded the Padma Shri. He currently lives in Jaipur (India), with his two sons, and his wife. His elder son Salil Bhatt, a highly regarded Mohan Veena player and his younger son Saurabh Bhatt, is a well-known music composer. Text contributed by users is available under Creative Commons By–SA License. It may also be available under GNU FDL.
