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Kesarbai Kerkar (Devanagari: सुरश्री कॆसरबाई कॆरकर) (July 13, 1892 – September 16, 1977) was an Indian classical vocalist of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana.^[1] She is considered one of the finest and most powerful Indian classical singers of the 20th century.^{[citation needed]}

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Born in the tiny village of Keri (also spelled "Querim"), in the Ponda taluka of North Goa, Goa (then a Portuguese colony), at the age of eight Kerkar moved to Kolhapur where she studied for eight months with Abdul Karim Khan. Upon her return to Goa, she studied with the vocalist Ramkrishnabuwa Vaze (1871–1945). At the age of 16 she migrated to Mumbai, where she studied with various teachers, eventually ending up as disciple to Ustad Alladiya Khan (1855–1946), the founder of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana, beginning in 1921. She belongs to Gomantak Maratha Samaj.

Career[link]

Kerkar eventually achieved wide renown, performing regularly for aristocratic audiences. She was very particular about the representation of her work and consequently made only a few 78 rpm recordings, for the HMV and Broadcast labels.

Kerkar was awarded the decoration of Padma Bhushan by the government of India in 1969, and in the same year the government of the Indian state of Maharashtra conferred upon her the title of "Rajya Gayika." Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) is said to have been very fond of Kerkar's singing. Her honorific title "Surashri" (or "Surshri") literally means "excellent voice" (sur meaning "voice" and shri meaning "excellent), and was bestowed on her in 1948 by the Sangeet Pravin Sangitanuragi Sajjan Saman Samiti of Calcutta. In her ancestral village of Keri, the Surashree Kesarbai Kerkar High School now occupies the site of Kerkar's former second home, and the house where she was born still stands, less than one kilometer away. A music festival called the Surashree Kesarbai Kerkar Smriti Sangeet Samaroha is held in Goa each November and a music scholarship in her name is awarded annually to a University of Mumbai student.

Kerkar has the further distinction of having one of her recordings, "Jaat Kahan Ho", duration 3:30 (an interpretation of raga Bhairavi) included on the Voyager Golden Record, a gold-plated copper disc containing music selections from around the world, which was sent into space aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts in 1977. The recording was recommended for inclusion on the Voyager disc by the ethnomusicologist Robert E. Brown, who believed it to be the finest recorded example of Indian classical music.

Since 2000, several CDs of her archival recordings have been released, including one on the Golden Milestones series, which contains several of her most famous songs.

Recordings[link]

• Classical Vocal CD (2008) from Sangeet Natak Akademi
• Golden Milestones (2003)
• Vintage 78 Rpm Recording on CD
• Living Music of the Past CD from Underscore Records site
• Baithak Series - Live concert Recordings A set of 4 CDs Published by Sangeet Kendra

References[link]

External links[link]

• Kesarbai's music page from Vijaya Parrikar Library of Indian Classical Music
• Kesarbai's Photo Album from Rajan Parrikar Music Archive

Pannalal Ghosh (31 July 1911 – 20 April 1960), also known as Amal Jyoti Ghosh, was a Bengali Indian flute (bansuri) player and composer. He was a disciple of Allauddin Khan, and is credited with giving the flute its status in Hindustani classical music.^[1]

Career[link]

Pannalal Ghosh jointly scoring the background for “Aandhiyan” in 1952 along with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Pandit Ravi Shankar.^[2] He was the first to introdce the seven hole flute.

Disciples[link]

Authentic list of Pt. Pannalal Ghosh’s noteworthy students at Calcutta contained Haripada Choudhary, Aminur Rehman (MintuDa), Fakirchanda Samanta, Sudhanshu Choudhury, Mukul Roy and Gaur Goswami. The students at Bombay included Tribhuvan Gondkar, Rasbihari Desai, Devendra Murdeshwar, V.G. Karnad, Chandrakant Joshi, Mohan Nadkarni, Prabhakar Nachane, Niranjan Haldipur, Krishnarao D. Desai, Ramaprasad Mukherjee, Mahesh Mastfakir, Sharad Moholay, Bhailal Barot, Suraj Narain Purohit and Hari Chabria.

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Legacy of Pannalal Ghosh, A Resource page at (The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts)
• PannalalGhosh.info
• Pannalal Ghosh at the Internet Movie Database
• https://sites.google.com/site/bansuripannalalghosh/

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Pandit Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi ( pronunciation (help·info)); February 4, 1922 – January 24, 2011) was an Indian vocalist in the Hindustani classical tradition. A member of the Kirana Gharana (school), he is renowned for the khayal form of singing, as well as for his popular renditions of devotional music (bhajans and abhangs). He was the most recent recipient of the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, awarded in 2008.^[1]

Early life[link]

Joshi was born into a Kannadiga family in the town of Ron, which was then in Dharwar, District in northern Karnataka state of India.^[2][3] His father, Gururaj Joshi, was a school teacher. Bhimsen was the eldest in a family of 16 siblings. Some of the siblings still live in their ancestral home in Gadag.^[4] Bhimsen lost his mother when he was young, and his step mother then raised him. His parents lived initially with his grandfather as tenants of a Kulkarni household, but then moved to Gadag (now a district headquarter).

As a child, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi's craving for music was evident to his family as he managed to lay his hands on a 'tanpura' used by his 'Kirtankar' grandfather, which had been kept away from his gaze at home. Music had such a magnetic pull over him that a 'bhajan singing' procession or just 'azaan' from a nearby mosque was said to draw him out of house.^[5]

Musical training[link]

Joshi got his first basic foundation in music from Chinnappa, a local musician who was a family washerman in profession. [1] The one and only unique vigorous style of rendering he developed along with advanced trainings by other teachers is attributed to the basic training he received. Until the first half of the 20th century, khyal was principally taught in the Guru Shishya (master-disciple) tradition. Bhimsen's guru Sawai Gandharva was the chief disciple of Abdul Karim Khan, who along with his cousin Abdul Wahid Khan was the founder of the Kirana Gharana school of Hindustani music.

Search for a guru[link]

Joshi heard a recording of Abdul Karim Khan's Thumri "Piya Bin Nahi Aavat Chain" in Raga Jhinjhoti when he was a child, which inspired him to become a musician. In 1933, the 11-year-old Joshi left Dharwad for Bijapur to find a master and learn music.^[3] With the help of money lent by his co-passengers in the train Bhimsen reached Dharwad first and later went to Pune. Later he moved to Gwalior and got into Madhava Music School, a school run by Maharajas of Gwalior, with the help of famous sarod player Hafiz Ali Khan. He traveled for three years around North India, including in Delhi, Kolkata, Gwalior, Lucknow and Rampur, trying to find a good guru.^[6] Eventually, his father succeeded in tracking him down in Jalandar and brought young Bhimsen back home.

Sawai Gandharva[link]

In 1936, Rambhau Kundgolkar (alias Sawai Gandharva), a native of Dharwad, agreed to be his guru. Bhimsen Joshi stayed at his house in the traditional guru-shishya (teacher-student) tradition, gleaning knowledge of music from his master as and when he could, while performing odd-jobs in his house. Another renowned vocalist from the Kirana Gharana, Gangubai Hangal, was a co-student of Bhimsen during this time. Joshi continued his training with Sawai Gandharva till 1940.

Career[link]

Joshi first performed live in 1941 at the age 19. His debut album, containing a few devotional songs in Kannada and Hindi, was released by HMV the next year in 1942. Later Joshi moved to Mumbai in 1943 and worked as a radio artist. His performance at a concert in 1946 to celebrate his guru Sawai Gandharva's 60th birthday won him accolades both from the audience and his guru.^[7]

Hindustani classical music[link]

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Bhimsen Joshi's music was hailed by both the critics and the masses. His performances were said to have been marked by spontaneity, accurate notes, dizzyingly-paced taans which make use of his exceptional voice training, and a mastery over rhythm. The Hindu, in an article written after he was awarded the Bharat Ratna, said: Bhimsen Joshi was ever the wanderer, engendering brilliant phrases and tans more intuitively than through deliberation.^[8] Joshi occasionally employed the use of sargam and tihaais, and often sang traditional compositions of the Kirana gharana. His music often injected surprising and sudden turns of phrase, for example through the unexpected use of boltaans. Over the years, his repertoire tended to favor a relatively small number of complex and serious ragas; however, he remained one of the most prolific exponents of Hindustani classical music. Some of Joshi's more popular ragas include Shuddha Kalyan, Miyan Ki Todi, Puriya Dhanashri, Multani, Bhimpalasi, Darbari, and Ramkali. He was considered a purist and has not dabbled in experimental forms of music, except for a well-known series of Jugalbandi recordings with the Carnatic signer M. Balamuralikrishna.

Apart from stalwarts of the Kirana Gharana, Bhimsen Joshi's singing was thought to have been influenced by many musicians, including Smt. Kesarbai Kerkar, Begum Akhtar and Ustad Amir Khan. Joshi assimilated into his own singing various elements that he liked in different musical styles and Gharanas.

Devotional music[link]

In devotional music, Joshi was most acclaimed for his Kannada, Hindi and Marathi Bhajan singing. His commercially successful CDs Daaswani and Enna Paliso included Kannada Bhajans, and Santawani included Marathi Abhangs.

Patriotic music[link]

Bhimsen Joshi was widely recognized in India due to his performance in the Mile Sur Mera Tumhara music video (1985), which begins with him. The video was created for the purpose of national integration in India, and highlights the diversity of Indian culture. Bhimsen Joshi was also a part of Jana Gana Mana produced by A. R. Rahman on the occasion of 50th year of Indian Republic.

Playback singing[link]

Joshi sang for several films, including Basant Bahar (1956) with Manna Dey, Birbal My Brother (1973) with Pandit Jasraj, and Kannada films like Sandhya Raaga and Nodi Swami Naavu Irodhu Heege. He also sang for the films Tansen (1958) and Ankahee (1985) where latter fetched him National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer.^[9]

Sawai Gandharva Music Festival[link]

Joshi organized the Sawai Gandharva Music Festival as an homage to his guru, Sawai Gandharva, along with the Arya Sangeet Prasarak Mandal in 1953, marking Gandharva's first death anniversary. The festival has been held ever since, typically on the second weekend of December in Pune, Maharashtra and has become not only a cultural event for the city, but an annual pilgrimage for Hindustani Classical Music lovers all over the world. Joshi conducted the festival annually since 1953, until his retirement in 2002.

Students[link]

Joshi taught many students, several of whom have gone onto commercial success.

• Madhava Gudi
• Shripati Padegar
• Shrikant Deshpande
• Pandit Vinayak Torvi
• Rajendra Dixit
• Shrinivas Joshi, Joshi's son.
• Ashutosh Bharadwaj
• Anand Bhate
• Pandit Upendra Bhat

Legacy[link]

Bhimsen Joshi was known for his powerful voice, amazing breath control, fine musical sensibility and unwavering grasp of the fundamentals, representing a subtle fusion of intelligence and passion that imparted life and excitement to his music.^[5] A classicist by training, and temperament, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi was renowned for having evolved an approach that sought to achieve a balance between what may be termed as "traditional values and mass-culture tastes" and as such he went on to have supposedly the largest commercially recorded repertoire in Hindustani vocal music. Pt. Joshi's iconic status in the music world has earned him a whole generation of suni shagirds who by merely listening to him have picked up his style and not through any formal tutelage. His greatest endeavour in perpetuating his legacy could be the Sawai Gandharva Festival held at Pune. annually since the year 1953 which seeks to promote a certain music culture.^[5]

Personal life[link]

Bhimsen Joshi was well known to have a passion for cars. He was known to be an expert swimmer, a keen enthusiast of yoga and a football player in his younger days. He had acknowledged his weakness for alcohol but left it in 1979 after it started affecting his career.^[5]

Illness and death[link]

Joshi was admitted to Sahyadri Super Speciality Hospital on December 31, 2010 with gastrointestinal bleeding and bilateral pneumonia. Due to difficulty in breathing, he was put on ventilator support. He suffered convulsions and was put on dialysis too during his stay in hospital. Though he recovered briefly for three days when he was taken off the ventilator, his condition deteriorated thereafter. He died on 24 January 2011 at 08:00 am (IST), 11 days before his 89th birthday.^[10] He was cremated at Vaikunth Crematorium in Pune with full state honors.^[11]

Awards and recognitions[link]

• 1972 - Padma Shree^[12]
• 1976 - Sangeet Natak Akademi Award^[12]
• 1985 - Padma Bhushan^[12]
• 1985 - National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer
• 1986 - "First platinum disc"^[13]
• 1999 - Padma Vibhushan^[12]
• 2000 - "Aditya Vikram Birla Kalashikhar Puraskar"^[14]
• 2001 - "Nadoja Award" from Kannada University^[15]
• 2002 - Maharashtra Bhushan^[16]
• 2003 - "Swathi Sangeetha Puraskaram" by Government of Kerala^[17]
• 2005 - Karnataka Ratna^[12]
• 2008 - Bharat Ratna^[12]
• 2008 - "Swami Haridas Award"^[18]
• 2009 - "Lifetime achievement award" by Delhi government^[19]
• 2010 - "S V Narayanaswamy Rao National Award" by Rama Seva Mandali, Bangalore