Hey... Once again, I need some help for a project at work. If you know of any Indian peole, regardless of their age, location or ***, caste, creed, race, language, religion (you get the drift) who have invented, created a musical instrument, then please, please, please do tell me. Reputation guarenteed for good replies. Secondly, to all those who listen to good FOLK music, gimme some names of prominent musicianas from your area who play any folk / classical instrument very well, and if possible, their contacts. PLEASE!!!
I dunno if this qualifies. Living in India, you might not have heard of Debashish Bhattacharya but he is considered amongst the best slide guitarists in the world. He lives in Calcutta, plays Indian Classical music and also gives lessons in the old school guruji way. I can find out more about him if you want. For the Calcuttans who went to the John McLaughlin concert in January 2005, he's the slide guitarist who played a couple of songs with them in the middle of the show.
vishwa mohan bhat invented some instrument, which pardon my memory, i cant remember the name of. also i dont know vishwa mohan bhat's address. as for typical indian/folk music, you could mention the ghatam (a very close relative of the tom-tom) that they play in karnataki vocal recitals etc. and if you are a fan of rajasthani folk music, then you may mention some of their instruments, the sounds of which range from that of a camel's hoof landing on a sandstone fort (producing a sound roughly in the in the "tthack" family) to that of a pair of heavy bangles knocking against each other (in the "cching-trrring" family). and now about those reps you were talking about....
The instrument is called the Mohan Veena. Debashish Bhattacharya has also developed his own Hindustani slide guitar with chikari (sympathetic strings). U. Srinivas has altered the mandolin's strings..his have single strings instead of 12-string guitar type 6 strings through 3 courses. The santoor was an obscure folk instrument until Shiv Kumar Sharma took it out of oblivion...he changed tunings etc so that the instrument could develop something resembling meend (glissando). The kanjira ( a small snakeskin drum) was not a valid Carnatic instrument and used exclusively in folk until V. Selvaganesh (son of Vikku Vinayakaram) took it out of obscurity. The Bauls of Bengal use an instrument called a gubgubi-you might have seen Amit Kilam playing it in Indian Ocean concerts. You can Google for the Mehar Band for lots of stuff on revival of folk/classical music in India.
i dont have any and googling didnt help either. i saw it on tv tho once. the inventor played it and showed.
