Bhatt rendered the '€œRaaga Maaru Bihaag'€, slowly building the mood for the audience at Teater Jakarta at the Taman Ismail Marzuki Arts complex in Cikini, Central Jakarta.

After Bhatt'€™s 15-minute solo performance; Pandit Ram Kumar Mishra joined in, playing his tabla and enriching the electrifying sound of Bhatt'€™s uniqueinstrument.

Together they played '€œVilambit Gat'€ and '€œDrut Gat'€ in a '€œTeental'€ composition that comprised a 16-beat cycle.

The one-hour performance closed with India'€™s national song '€œVande Mataram'€ and India'€™s national anthem, '€œJana Gana Mana Adhinayak'€.

Bhatt'€™s recent show kicked off the Festival of India in Indonesia 2015 and was also held to commemorate India'€™s 66th Independence Day on Jan. 26.

'€œIt'€™s nice to be back here again,'€ Bhatt told The Jakarta Post before the gig. '€œI'€™ve always liked Jakarta and Indonesia.'€

The Grammy-winning instrumentalist said most of his performances were based on spontaneous creativity on stage.

He said he always played different pieces at concerts to give listeners the freshest sounds.

'€œMy idea is to always have something new [for the audience] which is new to me also. It will be composed on the stage, and that'€˜s what makes my music interesting,'€ he said.

The 64-year-old was born into a family devoted to classical music. A tradition of playing classical music had run in the family for hundreds years so that he never thought of doing anything else other than being a musician, Bhatt said.

'€œMusic is in my blood. It was always easy for me to understand the language of music since I was very little,'€ said Bhatt, whose sons and grandchildren are also musicians.

Once the foremost disciple of legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar, Bhatt was driven to explore other musical forms, which lead to his creation of the mohan veena.

'€œI wanted to have a sound which could include the sounds and technique of Indian traditional instruments '€” like the sitar, sarod and veena '€” but with its own character,'€ he said.

In the early 1970s, he developed the mohan veena, modifying a concord archtop guitar to have up to 19 strings, comprising three melody strings, up to four drone strings strung from peg heads and 12 sympathetic strings mounted to the tuners on the side of the neck.

'€œWhat we need in Indian music is '€˜legato'€™, where we can go from one note to another without breaking the sound. And this instrument allows legato at the highest level,'€ he said.

However, Bhatt said it was not easy for him to introduce a new instrument in traditional India. However, attracted by his authentic and pure music, people started to accept his invention.

The mohan veena is currently used by musicians around the world; while Bhatt won a Grammy Award in 1994 for A Meeting by the River, recorded with Ry Cooder, the renowned American slide guitarist and musical explorer.

'€œIt'€™s been a gradual process for people to accept my sound,'€ Bhatt said. '€œWhen I won the Grammy, I felt like my work had been recognized at the world level. It was like a pat on my back that drove me to do more.'€

He has performed around the world, including cities such as New York, London, and Toronto, and has collaborated with top talents such as Chinese Ehru player Jei Bing Chang, American Dobro guitarist Jerry Douglas and American banjo player Béla Fleck.

With experience and fame under his belt, Bhatt says he has no plans to stop performing, He, instead, wants to make more collaborations with musicians from other countries, including Indonesia, in the future.

'€œI will keep playing music, because music makes me a good human being '€” makes me very relaxed and gives me positive vibrations for thinking and [the] ideology to live,'€ Bhatt said.

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