Salil Bhatt with stage partner Aarthi Shankar: Rhythm and raga. Picture by Amit Datta

Musical legacy sits easy on Salil V. Bhatt.

Just 30, he has already emerged out of the shadow of his father — Grammy award-winner Padmashree Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. And now by inventing the crescent-tailed Satvik veena — an improvisation on the Mohan veena that his father had created about 33 years ago — he is set to carve out his own niche in the field of Hindustani classical music.

The Mohan veena is a hybrid slide guitar, customised by Pandit Bhatt to adapt to Indian classical music. Bhatt Junior has now replaced most of the horizontal metal keys at the veena’s tail-end with vertical wooden ones to “increase resonance” and give a more vocal tinge to the sound. Miniature machines for tuning, hidden underneath the wooden panels, promise to make it last for “generations to come”.

“I guess, from now on the critics and connoisseurs will look at me differently. I am proud to be part of the over 500-year-old Bhatt lineage. I have tried to master the Mohan veena for more than 16 years now. But every musician aches for recognition of his individual style and contribution. The Satvik veena is my first step towards achieving that goal,” reasons Bhatt, who has already played the few-week-old invention in Hyderabad and Jaipur recently to much acclaim. “I named it after my five-year-old son who has already mastered the Mohan veena,” beams the proud father.

But on Thursday, it is not just his recital, based on raga Puriyadhanashri, that Birla Academy of Art & Culture could look forward to. Aarthi Shankar, an acclaimed exponent of Bharatanatyam, will accompany the ‘Prince of Ragas’ on stage. “We met during a concert in which both of us were performing. That is when we struck upon the idea of encapsulating Bharatanatyam and Hindustani classical music in a package,” explains Aarthi, a student of danseuse Saroja Vaidyanathan of Delhi. A jugalbandi between the twinkle-toed dancer and Bhatt in Bangalore is on the cards in June.

Once known for his aversion to the very concept of promotion of classical music, Bhatt has had to bring about a lot of changes to his thought process in the past one year. “I was against remixes and ‘mindless’ music before. But it is okay now. Music can never be wrong. But it is sad that the youth in our country shy away from classical music even before trying it out once. Perhaps their previous generations are to blame for not introducing them to our culture. I would like to reach out to the young people through my music. So, I am also thinking of a video album,” says Bhatt, who himself loves tuning in to Daler Mehndi while driving. In the coming years, he expects more sponsors to come forward to back his generation of classical musicians to help in this endeavour.

In fact, once a youngster from the audience walked up to him after a performance and said: “I loved that. But was it classical music?”. But that’s fine with Bhatt. “All I want my audience to do is enjoy my music. I hope Calcutta will, too,” he says.