performer
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt in 2006
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; 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 then fourteen-year-old son Joachim on
dumbek, a Middle Eastern drum, and by Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari on
tabla. The collaboration between Cooder and Bhatt is Alexander's first attempt to record musicians of different cultures together, one of his goals when he founded the record label. In 2011, Bhatt performed "A Meeting by the River" at a music festival in honor of
guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. Bhatt said of the song, "Music has no religion and no geographical or linguistic barrier. It speaks a universal language. My composition – 'A Meeting by the River' – aims at explaining this." Bhatt has said he considers working with Cooder his "most special" collaboration. ==Reception==