Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, who also shows a real interest in the slide guitar. In creating the mohan veena, half guitar half sitar, not dissimilar to a sarod, he added 14 strings to increase its potential, allowing bluesy and Hawaiian sounds and forcing the player to go beyond the boundaries of traditional playing, which is fascinating in itself. As a Grammy award winner, for his album “A Meeting by the River” recorded as a duo with Ry Cooder in 1994, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt is one of the few Indian musicians to be known by westerners, not only as an excellent improviser but also as a soulful composer. Formerly a student of Ravi Shankar, Bhatt manufactured the Mohan Veena, a guitar which combines the features of traditional Indian string instruments with those of the North American Slide Guitar, and continues till today to be an exponent of its most beautiful characteristics. After 25 years, the talented artists of DIVANA have given prestigious concerts in various festivals dedicated to gypsies. They gave their first concert in Florence in 1991 as part of the “Musica Populi” festival. This was followed by the Garnier Opera in Paris, as part of the “Paris, Quartier d’Eté” festival, the “Route des Nomades” as part of the 1993 Montpellier festival “Printemps des Comediens”, “La route des gitans” in La Villette in 1994, and finally the International Music Festival in Lucerne in 1995. They also took part in the “From Sitar to the Guitar” evening created by Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin, in Brussels in 1995 and performed for a week at Sydney Opera House in January 1997. They also took part in the Latcho Drom film festival produced by Tony Gatlif in 1992 and figured in the “De père à Fils” line-up presented at the “Théâtre du Soleil” in 1992, and in the show “Chimère”, a creation of the famous French equestrian circus Zingaro, created by director Bartabas in 1994.