ABSTRACT
Mohan veena, satvik veena, hansa veena, shankar veena, siddha veena, gyan veena, kachhapi veena, vishwa veena, swar ragini veena, saraswani veena … these are all names given by their performers to a new generation of instruments derived from the structure of the slide-guitar in India. Each name adds a cosmological modifier to the sanskritic word for lute, imbuing the objects with traditional Hindu symbolism while at the same time branding the object with a personal marker of innovation. These monikers have a profound effect on an artist's musical career in ways that blend marketing, authenticity, nationalism, and spirituality together with an aura of invention. This chapter explores the history of slide-guitar in India, questioning the genesis narratives and naming schemes that have propelled the careers of some of the most prominent Hindustani slide-guitarists, revealing a complicated web of community relationships, fierce competition, legal battles over design patents, and brilliant musicians and inventors who have faced incredible challenges to success. My goal is to interrogate the symbolic and political power enacted through the process of creative naming and design of instruments while bringing attention to individuals who have faced erasure under the weight of these marketing narratives, especially a key figure in the history of the slide-guitar in India, master luthier Bhaba Sindhu Biswas. While riding a great wave of cultural change, the slide-guitar in India today is still a cultural object in the process of development, making it an ideal subject of theoretical analysis within an emerging field of critical organology that includes the process of invention, the social and political aspects of instrument creation, the creative byproducts of cultural exchange, and the effects of Hindu spirituality and cultural nationalism on musical economies. In examining the value of instrument naming, I employ theoretical perspectives ranging from Benjamin's ‘aura’ to Bourdieu's ‘cultural capital’ to illuminate the development of the slide-guitar in India, and I argue that the slide-guitar's success can be attributed to a unique mixture of innovative design, naming, and musicianship that brings a foreign instrument into a local context by combining and conflating notions of traditional and modern. The chapter draws on fieldwork in slide-guitar communities of Jaipur, Delhi, and Kolkata, exploring not only the performance practices of this hybrid instrument but also the multifaceted politics of organological invention that are central to understanding the instrument and its practitioners. Contributing to this work are dozens of ethnographic interviews with performers across India and in-depth conversations with well-known instrument makers from Delhi and Kolkata. Ultimately, the chapter shows the great significance of the slide-guitar within modern Indian culture and how the instrument exemplifies the future of the Hindustani music genre.
