Pt. Debashish Bhattacharya
Indian Slide Guitar
The pioneer who brought the slide guitar fully into Hindustani classical music. Rhitom trained under him for years, beginning at the age of nine.
A guitar laid flat across the lap, a polished steel bar, and the gliding voice of a raga. For one evening, the meeting of Spanish strings and Hindustani song comes to a living room in Chevy Chase.
The Evening
Join us for an intimate, living-room concert featuring one of Hindustani classical music’s most distinctive voices. This is a “pin-drop” kind of evening — a rare chance to experience the depth and nuance of Indian classical music from just a few feet away, in the warmth of a private home.
Rhitom is joined by Debu Nayak on tabla, whose intricate finger-work creates a living dialogue with the sliding tones of the guitar. There is no stage and there are no barriers — only the natural resonance of the instruments in a quiet room.
“Indian raga, sung through Spanish strings — meditative, expressive, and deeply spiritual.”
The Artist
The Artist
Rhitom Sarkar
Born in Kolkata, Rhitom Sarkar began his musical journey at the age of nine. He trained under the sitar maestro Pt. Shyamal Chatterjee and the slide-guitar legend Pt. Debashish Bhattacharya, and went on to deepen his art through tabla, sarod, vocal, and meditation-based musical systems.
His style is rooted in Indian classical raga but expanded through years of research into the meeting of Spanish and Hindustani slide techniques — a signature sound that is meditative, expressive, and deeply spiritual.
With albums, international festivals, and teaching engagements around the world, he has become a torchbearer of classical-guitar innovation in India. For fifteen years he has also made classical-fusion music with the band Symphony, blending the best of both worlds.
Sur-Mani · Sur Singar Samsad, Mumbai'A' Grade Artist · All India RadioSangeet Bhaskar · Gold MedalistTrisaptika Kala Ratna & Sangeet Yuva RatnaSenior Scholarship · Ministry of Culture
The Lineage
His GurusRhitom’s art is the product of two lineages held in one pair of hands — the raga depth of the sitar, and the gliding innovation of the Indian slide guitar.
Pt. Shyamal Chatterjee
Sitar
The sitar maestro under whom Rhitom built the raga foundation that underpins everything he plays.
The Instrument
On the Slide Guitar
The Indian classical slide guitar is a guitar reimagined: laid flat across the lap, its action raised, and played not on the frets but with a polished steel bar that the hand glides along the strings. That glide is everything — it lets the guitar do what fretted instruments cannot: produce meend, the continuous, vocal slide between notes that lies at the very heart of raga.
Brought into Hindustani music by pioneers such as Brij Bhushan Kabra and Rhitom’s own guru, Pt. Debashish Bhattacharya, the instrument sits between a sitar’s resonance and a steel guitar’s sustain. Rhitom adds one more thread — the fingerstyle articulation of the Spanish guitar — woven into the Hindustani gayaki ang, the “singing style.”
In Performance
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