Review - A Meeting By The River
There’s some music in this world, which grows on you with every listening and some which fades away if heard once too often. But rarely is crafted an album such as this one; a surge of emotions so deep that you can’t possibly tell if it’s from the music or just you. And what is better than to revel in this dilemma.
The album ‘A Meeting By the River’ is a collaboration between Ry Cooder playing the slide guitar and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt playing his self-carved instrument, the Mohan Veena1. The album went on to win the 1994 Grammy for the ‘Best World Music Album’. The two great masters are supported by tabla player Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari and Cooder’s son Joachim on the Dumbek.
First up is the title track, A Meeting By the River. Oh what joy, what bliss lies in those exquisite notes of Raga2 Tilak Kamod. While Bhatt hits them clean and rejoices, Cooder com ple ments them with the intense blues-ness of bottleneck sliding on the guitar frets. It conjures up memories of the evenings I spent on the bank of the Ganga in Rishikesh just listening to the river flow. This piece is nothing short of that experience.
The feel of the next track Longing is a contrast to the first one, but involves a transition that is inevitably natural. The lonesome happiness of the first track is followed by a longing ; a longing for that distant someone who m you wish back. This feeling is captured in a melody that slowly rises and is then swiftly drawn back.
Longing , then, leads to a sort of self consolidation in the form of Ganges Delta Blues. The message seems to be that once you’ve loved, physical distances do not matter any longer. This composition is where Cooder takes the lead to a sort of ‘Delta Blues Jugalbandi3‘ as opposed to the previous two tracks which were dominated by Bhatt’s raga-based melodies. This track , more than the others, is a near perfect confluence of the two styles of music, Hindustani and the blues , a true fusion.
The final track, Isa Lei, is a Fijian farewell song. Though this track is not as salient as the previous three, it is one that you enjoy best in a leisurely, surreal mood. Whereas the previous tracks built up some intense emotional charges, this one just takes you for a feather-light ride on its ripples and then gently drops you ashore. Then, there is just peace.
This is what reinstills into one the joy of being a music lover.
A caution to hardcore Ry Cooder fans: this album is not like some of his ‘bluesy’ melody soundtracks (which I really like too) but something where he brings the blues into newer melodies unknown to a listener unfamiliar with Indian classical music. Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt is performing in Austin on April 4th , and if my previous two experiences are anything to go by, it will be another great day for music.
Release Date: 1993
Total Time: 39:35
Tracks: 4
Footnotes:
1 A hybrid between a Guitar and a Vichitra Veena (a rare indian instrument)
2 A generalized form of melodic practice
3 Joint musical improvization between two or more musicians in a conversational format
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