Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra

Born in Jodhpur to Goverdhanlal Kabra, Kabra grew up around Indian classical music but trained as a geologist and did not plan on a musical life. On a visit to Kolkata he came across the Hawaiian lap slide guitar and persuaded his father to let him take it up, promising to play only classical music. Living in Ahmedabad, he began by imitating records and later studied under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.

To make the instrument answer to raga, Kabra added sympathetic and drone strings. He was the first Indian musician to play raga on the guitar in public performance, and in 1967 he recorded Call of the Valley with the bansuri player Hariprasad Chaurasia and the santoor player Shivkumar Sharma — a record that carried Hindustani music to listeners well beyond its usual audience. From the 1990s he concentrated on teaching while continuing to perform.

He received the Rajasthan Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 1983–84, was made a fellow of that academy for 1995–96, and received the national Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 2005. He died in Ahmedabad on 12 April 2018.

Kabra played the guitar laid flat and stopped with a slide, with added sympathetic and drone strings so that the instrument could sustain and shade notes in the manner expected of raga performance.