Pandit
Brij Bhushan Kabra
"why confuse the situation? After all, it is just a modified slide-guitar."
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.
"first, I'll teach you how to be a good human being"
ソース
- Andre J. Elias, Saraswati sings: the slide-guitar in India (2016) (opens in a new tab), University of Washington
- Premier Guitar, The secret world of Hindustani slide (2012) (opens in a new tab), Premier Guitar
- Sangeet Natak Akademi, list of Akademi awardees (opens in a new tab), Sangeet Natak Akademi
- MusicBrainz, Call of the Valley (opens in a new tab), MusicBrainz
Musical Contributions
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.
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 today carry both tarab and chikari strings.
Innovations
Chikari tuned to the tonic
Flat on the lap, high nut
Kept the name guitar
Lineage & Disciples
Guru-Shishya Parampara
Guru
Ali Akbar Khan
Sarod player and guru
マスター
Brij Bhushan Kabra
1937–2018
Notable Disciples
Pandit Debasis Chakroborty
Senior-most disciple
From the mid-1990s
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 to his own disciples.
Who were Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra's disciples?
Pandit 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.
Life Timeline
What was the guitar's place in India before and after Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra?
Before Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra, Indian players used the Hawaiian guitar for song. Accounts of its arrival centre on Tau Moe. Premier Guitar places him in Calcutta between 1941 and 1947; Elias dates the story to the early 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s it led instrumental Rabindra sangeet and Nazrul geeti.
Elias writes that Kolkata slide guitarists, inspired by Kabra, turned to Hindustani classical playing in the early 1980s. Elias also records a rival claim from Barun Kumar Pal. Pal dates his classical radio work on slide guitar to 1952. Kabra recorded with the bansuri player Hariprasad Chaurasia and the santoor player Shivkumar Sharma. Hindustani classical playing on the slide guitar became the discipline of Indian slide guitar.
Recordings Archive
Preserved recordings, manuscripts, and archival materials
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.
Audio Recordings
4Call of the Valley(1967 (released 1968))
Source: Elias; MusicBrainz
Contact archive for access
Two Raga Moods on Guitar
Source: Premier Guitar
Contact archive for access
Lure of the Desert(1990)
Source: MusicBrainz
Contact archive for access
Jugalbandi, duet for violin and guitar: Raga Bageshri(1988)
Source: MusicBrainz
Contact archive for access
Archive Note: This collection represents known recordings and materials. Additional items may exist in private collections or institutional archives. If you have information about unlisted materials, please contact music preservation organizations.
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. 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.