--- url: 'https://kalasudha.com/en-int/legendary-masters/brij-bhushan-kabra' title: 'Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra | Hindustani slide guitar' author: name: rajeevk url: 'https://kalasudha.com/en-int/user/0f961cccc99524ed' date: '2026-10-28T01:06:19+00:00' updated: '2026-10-28T10:24:58+00:00' type: website summary: 'Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra adapted the slide guitar to Hindustani raga. Read about his guru and guitar, find which recordings to hear first, and learn his style.' tags: - 'Indian Slide Guitar' - 'Senia-Maihar Gharana' image: 'https://kalasudha.com/themes/custom/music_agency/assets/icon/logo.svg' published: true og: site_name: KalaSudha 'image:url': 'https://kalasudha.com/themes/custom/music_agency/assets/icon/logo.svg' 'image:secure_url': 'https://kalasudha.com/themes/custom/music_agency/assets/icon/logo.svg' 'image:type': image/svg+xml 'image:alt': KalaSudha --- [ Home ](/en-int) Brij Bhushan Kabra 1. [ Home ](/en-int) 2. 3. Legendary Masters 4. 5. Brij Bhushan Kabra Pandit # Brij Bhushan Kabra 1937–2018 Born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan Hindustani Indian Slide Guitar Senia-Maihar Gharana Indian Slide Guitar Sangeet Natak Akademi Award > "why confuse the situation? After all, it is just a modified slide-guitar." > > — Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra ## Life & Legacy **Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra** (1937–2018) was a guitarist from Jodhpur who adapted the slide guitar to Hindustani classical music, the start of Hindustani slide guitar. A disciple of the sarod player Ali Akbar Khan, he laid a modified archtop guitar flat and played raga on it with a bar. Premier Guitar writes that this approach set the standard for virtually all Indian slide guitarists. In 1967 he recorded **Call of the Valley** with Hariprasad Chaurasia and Shivkumar Sharma. ## Who was Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra? Kabra was a Hindustani classical guitarist from Jodhpur, Rajasthan, born in 1937, who died in 2018. The ethnomusicologist Andre Elias, in his 2016 University of Washington dissertation on the slide guitar in India, notes that the Kabra family had ties to the Jodhpur royal court. Kabra trained as a geologist and studied music with Ali Akbar Khan. He is known for playing raga on a guitar laid flat and for the album Call of the Valley. He received the **Sangeet Natak Akademi Award** for 2005. The Akademi, India's national academy for the performing arts, lists him under Hindustani music, instrumental, guitar. ## What did Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra contribute to Hindustani classical music? Kabra turned the slide guitar into an instrument for raga. He added two high strings tuned to the tonic as a **chikari**, drone strings struck between melody notes. Elias writes that the chikari let the guitar play jhala, the fast closing section of a raga. Elias names Kabra as the first person credited with adapting slide guitar to Hindustani classical music. Other accounts credit Barun Kumar Pal with classical radio performances on slide guitar from 1952. Kabra called his instrument an Indian classical slide guitar and declined to give it a new name. Its music is now a discipline of its own, [Indian slide guitar](/instrumental/hindustani-classical/indian-slide-guitar). ## What is the Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra style of slide guitar? The Kabra style takes the sarod as its model. Andy Ellis of Premier Guitar describes Ali Akbar Khan's fretless sarod as the sound Kabra set out to emulate. In the lineage Pandit Debasis Chakroborty teaches, the right hand comes from Ali Akbar Khan's sarod. Kabra sat on the floor, plucked with his fingers and stopped the strings with a bar. Elias writes that his slide could mimic vocal articulations and flourishes. Musicians call this singing style of playing **gayaki**. His repertoire came from the Maihar school. Manish Pingle, who set out to copy Kabra's style from his recordings, led with the right-hand middle finger after watching Kabra. ## What guitar did Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra play, and how was it strung? Kabra played a modified archtop guitar. Andy Ellis names it a **Gibson Super 400**. Elias describes a hollow-body archtop with steel strings. He writes that the original had no tarab, the sympathetic strings that ring with the raga. A high nut lifted the strings off the fretboard, as on a lap steel, so the bar set each pitch. Kabra added two chikari strings tuned to the tonic. On tarab the sources differ: Pandit Debasis Chakroborty, Kabra's senior-most disciple, credits Kabra with adding them. Concert [Indian slide guitars](/instrument/indian-slide-guitar) today carry both tarab and chikari strings. ## Who was Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra's guru? Kabra's guru was **Ali Akbar Khan**, the sarod player trained from the age of three by his own father, Allauddin Khan. Allauddin Khan founded the Maihar school of North Indian classical music. Elias tells the story as Kabra's senior-most disciple told it to him. Kabra's father, a veena player, at first rejected the guitar and allowed it for Hindustani classical music alone. Family connections took Kabra to Ali Akbar Khan, who taught him exercises and short compositions called paltas. After a year Kabra played for his father and won his blessing. Kabra later taught compositions of the [Senia-Maihar gharana](/gharana/senia-maihar-gharana) to his own disciples. ## Who were Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra's disciples? [Pandit Debasis Chakroborty](/artist/debasis-chakroborty) is Kabra's senior-most disciple, and his playing reflects Kabra's style. He came to Kabra as a student in the mid-1990s and moved to Jodhpur to study with him. Elias records that Kabra told him, "first, I'll teach you how to be a good human being". Kabra urged him to add a chikari to his guitar, then taught him the gharana's compositions. Elias writes that many Kolkata slide guitarists, inspired by Kabra, began performing in the Hindustani classical style in the early 1980s. ## Which Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra recordings should I hear first? Start with Call of the Valley, the album Kabra made with Hariprasad Chaurasia on bansuri and Shivkumar Sharma on santoor. Elias and Premier Guitar date the recording to 1967; MusicBrainz dates its first release to 1968. Its ragas include Ahir Bhairava and Pahadi. Premier Guitar's essential listening list for Hindustani slide includes it. Then hear **Two Raga Moods on Guitar**, which Premier Guitar lists as his next release. Later albums include Lure of the Desert and a jugalbandi, or duet, on Bageshri with the violinist V. G. Jog. ## Where can I learn Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra's style today? You can learn the Kabra style online and in workshops on [Indian Slide Guitar, built by Pandit Debasis Chakroborty with KalaSudha](/course/indian-slide-guitar-debasis-chakroborty). Beginners start at Foundation, which sets up the instrument and the right hand the way Kabra played, and trains the bar and the ear. Intermediate teaches the two angs, gayaki and tantrakari, and the first gat, a composition set to a tala, the rhythmic cycle. Advanced closes with a composed gat and a judged concert. The course follows the Senia-Maihar line that Kabra passed to his senior-most disciple. ## Sources - [Andre J. Elias, Saraswati sings: the slide-guitar in India (2016)](https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/37195) - [Premier Guitar, The secret world of Hindustani slide (2012)](https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/The_Secret_World_of_Hindustani_Slide) - [Sangeet Natak Akademi, list of Akademi awardees](https://web.archive.org/web/20100417012651/http://www.sangeetnatak.gov.in/sna/awardeeslist.htm) - [MusicBrainz, Call of the Valley](https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/6329db5a-77c2-30b4-9fa0-aca1151f7e26)