A Meeting by the River

Studio album by Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt

Released

April 1993

Recorded

September 1992

Genre

Blues, international, new-age, pop rock

Length

39:35

Label

Water Lily Acoustics

Producer

Kavichandran Alexander, Jayant Shah

Ry Cooder chronology

Little Village
(1992)

A Meeting by the River
(1993)

Talking Timbuktu
(1994)

Vishwa Mohan Bhatt chronology

Gathering Rain Clouds
(1993)

A Meeting by the River
(1993)

Mumtaz Mahal
(1995)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Chicago Tribune
Rolling Stone

A Meeting by the River is an album recorded by Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt; it was recorded in September 1992 and released in April 1993 through the record label Water Lily Acoustics. This improvised, collaborative album features Cooder on slide guitar and Bhatt on the Mohan veena, a stringed instrument created by Bhatt. A Meeting by the River was produced by Kavichandran Alexander and Jayant Shah, engineered by Alexander, and mastered by Kevin Michael Gray and Paul Stubblebine. It peaked at number four on Billboard's Top World Music Albums chart, and earned Cooder and Bhatt Grammy Awards for Best World Music Album at the 36th Grammy Awards (1994). The album is included in Tom Moon's 2008 book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die.

A Meeting by the River was recorded in September 1992; it features Cooder solely on slide guitar and Bhatt on the Mohan veena, a stringed instrument he created.Allmusic's Daniel Gioffre described the instrument as a hybrid between a guitar and a vichitra veena; it is played with a metal slide moving across steel rods along the neck. Cooder had heard a recording of Hindustani classical music performed by Bhatt and was impressed by his playing and the "haunting clarity" of the Mohan veena. Cooder and Bhatt met for the first time less than one hour before recording began; they improvised much of the set; the album's liner notes state, "this recording was unplanned and unrehearsed". The album was produced by Kavichandran Alexander, founder of Water Lily Acoustics, and Jayant Shah. It was engineered by Alexander, and was mastered by Kevin Michael Gray and Paul Stubblebine. Cooder and Bhatt are accompanied by Cooder's fourteen-year-old son Joachim on dumbek, a Middle Eastern drum, and by Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari on tabla.

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Wikipedia