DIANA NYAD, host:

I know you're going to recognize the voice you're about to hear. Bob Duskis, our music guru, is on the show with us again today. Bob founded Six Degrees Records, a label up in San Francisco. Has his ear to the ground for music all over the world.

Bob, good to have you on the show again.

Mr. BOB DUSKIS: Thanks, Diana. Always good to be here. How are you doing?

NYAD: I'm doing real well. Somebody tells me that you're about to head off on a great musical trip yourself. Where you going, what you doing?

Mr. DUSKIS: Well, every year those of us involved in the world music industry get together at a convention called WOMEX, and this year it is in Seville, Spain. So I'm really looking forward to that. Always a great trip.

NYAD: All right. When you get back, if you heard somebody exciting I'm sure you'll be introducing us to them.

So, for today, where are we traveling with you?

Mr. DUSKIS: Well, today we're going to look at a great collaboration between two of the world's great slide guitar players, Diana. One is from America, from California, his name is Bob Brozman, and the other one is from Calcutta, India, and his name is Dabashish Bhattacharya. And Brozman is well-known for sort of making a career around collaborating with master musicians from all over the world. He's worked with people from Greece and China and Cuba and Okinawa and France. And on this particular record, he's gotten together with Bhattacharya. Both of these guys are masters of the slide guitar, which is a very particular style of playing guitar. But, of course, they're coming from very different cultures and very different directions.

And what Brozman likes to do with his collaborations is try and bridge all the cultural barriers that may come up when people who, of course, have been brought up in completely different parts of the world.

NYAD: Mm-hmm.

Mr. DUSKIS: So these guys immerse themselves in each other's lives and cultures, they learn as much of each other's languages as they can, they live together, they cook together, they eat together. And generally they really try and break down, to blur the lines between work and play and cultures. And I think you can really hear it in the incredibly sympathetic way these two collaborate on this record.

(Clip of song)

NYAD: Well, I sure hear the Indian influence there, Bob.

Mr. DUSKIS: It's very interesting; Brozman, Diana, loves to examine what he calls the ethnic migration of musical styles. And the slide guitar is not indigenous to India, but it was brought there by a Hawaiian guitar master in the 1920s. And Indian music has a lot of very similar sliding techniques, and the sitar or the sarongi and a lot of Indian instruments, so...

NYAD: Ah.

Mr. DUSKIS: ...they really took to this instrument. And since the '20s it's become a big part of their music and their sound. And Dabashish comes from a third generation of people who learned directly from this Hawaiian guitar master who brought it to India. So it's another example of just music sort of traveling across the world and across cultures. And now here we are with an American collaborating with an American. And the result is really, really nice.

(Clip of song)

Mr. DUSKIS: The record, by the way, is called "Mahima," which means divine inspiration.

NYAD: "Mahima." It's really pretty. Really, really easy on the ears.

(Clip of song)

NYAD: Thank you for that. I was very pleased to hear that one.

Let us move on. Where are we going to next?

Mr. DUSKIS: Well, earlier this year, you guys covered a great story about the Festival in the Desert...

NYAD: Oh, yes.

Mr. DUSKIS: ...which is an incredible gathering that takes place in the Sahara. And this is the third year that it's taken place. And finally someone has released a CD chronicling this wonderful event.

NYAD: Sounds good. You know, I remember, we have a reporter who's very talented, named Sean Barlow, and he did a long piece on the Festival in the Desert, fantastic music, and he really set the scene. And we put--we put a lot of that up on savvytraveler.org, it still exists there.

Mr. DUSKIS: Just to put it in a little bit of a cultural context: For, you know, hundreds of years, the nomadic tribes of the southern Sahara have gotten together on an annual basis and sort of exchange information and, as somebody put it so tactically, widened the gene pool amongst the tribes. And that sort of stopped in the '70s, '80s and '90s with warring between the tribes. And since then, a truce has broken out. And to celebrate, these wonderful musical gatherings have taken place. And finally this year, we got it down on CD. And the first thing we're going to hear from is a great Malian guitar player whose name is Afel Bocoum, and you can just hear the energy and the amazing music that came off the stage in the desert, and just imagine what it must have been like to be miles and miles from anything while these tribes gathered. And just a little bit of European and American tourists were there, but this is basically, you know, really a Malian/West African experience.

NYAD: I--I get--it's not like going to Staples Center and getting your seat and ticket, is it?

Mr. DUSKIS: No, I think it's about as far from that as possible.

NYAD: Must be fun.

(Clip of song)

Mr. DUSKIS: Interestingly enough, the next track that we have features a performer who is a huge celebrity for the Western world, and that is Robert Plant, formerly the vocalist with Led Zeppelin. And he was brought to the show by his guitarist, Justin Adams, who also plays in a very well-known French band called Lo'Jo that helped pull all this music together for the festival. And from what I understand, 90 percent of the people had no idea who he was, Diana.

NYAD: Oh, really? That's funny.

(Clip of song)

NYAD: Yeah, there it is. Thirty years, the voice doesn't change, does it? Let's hear him, Robert Plant.

(Clip of song)

NYAD: OK. The CD's "Festival in the Desert." Absolutely fascinating, especially when you throw in Robert Plant in there. I just love that. And the slide guitar duo, and that CD is called "Mahima."

Good stuff, Bob. Really appreciate it.

Mr. DUSKIS: Well, good. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

NYAD: OK. This is Bob Duskis. He co-founded Six Degrees Records in San Francisco. He's our SAVVY TRAVELER guide to the world music.

Bob, see you in a couple of weeks.

Mr. DUSKIS: OK.

NYAD: And we're going to put all the links to the music you just heard up on savvytraveler.org.