Another Indo-American Collaboration

About a decade before the Debashish Bhattacharya / Bob Brozman collaboration recently considered, Ry Cooder and V.M.Bhatt produced the album A Meeting By The River. This is a purely instrumental venture, with four tracks giving the two of them a chance to stretch out in displays of subtle interplay. It is easy to discern the differences between the bottleneck of Cooder and the Indian slide guitar ( mohan vina ) of V.M. Bhatt but the similarities of approach and group improvisation is also strong. There first track has an Indian raga feel, the next two more of a recognisable blues base and the disk ends with a gentle Hawaiian or even Mexican feel. Both musicians are admirers of the revered sufi poet Rumi and the disk is ostensibly based around one of his poems, although to be honest that wouldn't be evident without reading the booklet notes, other than in the serenity of much of the music. Percussion duties are undertaken by Sukhvinder Singh Mandhari on tabla and the then 14 year old Joachim Cooder ( Ry's son ) on dumbek. If such a disk were to be recorded now, it would be treated more as a fanfare project, rather than the impromptu "recorded in an afternoon" vibe this disk has and is all the better for.