Pandit Akhilesh Gundecha

Akhilesh Gundecha took a different path from his elder brothers Umakant and Ramakant Gundecha, who sing: he plays the pakhawaj, the barrel drum that accompanies dhrupad. His teachers are consistently named as Pandit Shrikant Mishra and Raja Chhatrapati Singh Judeo, the pakhawaj player of the Bijna family. He holds a postgraduate qualification in music and a law degree, and held scholarships from the Ustad Allauddin Khan Sangeet Academy in Bhopal and from the Government of India.

As an accompanist he has played for dhrupad singers of the Dagar circle and beyond — biographical listings name Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar, Ustad Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar, Ustad Sayeeduddin Dagar, Ustad Bahauddin Dagar, Pandit Siyaram Tiwari, Asgari Bai, Dr Ritwik Sanyal, Pandit Uday Bhawalkar and his own brothers. He has also accompanied musicians outside dhrupad, including Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia and Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt.

He has given solo pakhawaj recitals at Tansen Samaroh in Gwalior, Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, Haridas Sangeet Samaroh in Mumbai and the Dhrupad Samaroh in Bhopal, and abroad at the Ali Akbar College of Music in California and the Smithsonian in Washington. He founded Madhya Laya, a north Indian taal vadya kachahari — a percussion ensemble presentation — that has toured in India and the United States.

He teaches pakhawaj at the Dhrupad Sansthan, the residential school his family runs near Bhopal. Published listings credit him with the Sur Mani award from Sur Singar Samsad in 1990 and a gold medal at the Dhrupad Mela in Banaras in 2008.

Pakhawaj accompaniment in dhrupad follows the singer through composed sections in chautal, dhamar, sultal and similar cycles, and Akhilesh Gundecha's solo work draws on the same repertoire of parans and layakari presented without a vocalist.