Dhondutai Kulkarni

Dhondutai Kulkarni was born on 23 July 1927 in Kolhapur. Her father Ganpatrao Kulkarni, an art aficionado who set out to secure the best possible training for his daughter, initiated her into music. Her first lessons, very brief, came at the age of five from Natthan Khan, a nephew of Alladiya Khan and adopted son of Haider Khan.

Kolhapur was then a princely state where Alladiya Khan was honoured as darbar gayak and his son Bhurji Khan sang each morning at the Mahalaxmi temple. Ganpatrao attended those recitals with his daughter and pressed for her admission as a student; Bhurji Khan, initially reluctant, accepted her, and she trained with him for around ten years, from 1940 to 1950. She had already gained recognition as a child artiste and performed on All India Radio from the age of eight.

After Bhurji Khan's death in 1950 she spent a period in Hyderabad, where she worked in a pharmaceutical company owned by her maternal uncle and performed on All India Radio with an 'A' grade. In 1957 she received a three-year scholarship from the Central Government Ministry of Education and resumed training in Kolhapur with Laxmibai Jadhav, the former darbar gayika of Baroda and a disciple of Haider Khan, while also learning from Azizuddin Khan, Alladiya Khan's grandson and Bhurji Khan's son. She described this as her golden learning period, the source of many rare ragas and compositions; her association with Azizuddin Khan lasted until his death in 2010.

Kesarbai Kerkar, who had said she was ready to accept a disciple as dedicated as she had been, took Dhondutai on as her only student. The family sold their property in Kolhapur and settled in Mumbai for that training, which ran from 1962 until 1971, when Kesarbai's health began to fail. Dhondutai died in Mumbai on 1 June 2014.

Her music carried the orthodox Jaipur-Atrauli gayaki: full-throated vocalism, an unbroken flow of line, and the characteristic taans of the tradition, along with a repertoire of uncommon ragas received from Azizuddin Khan. She taught in the manner she had learned from Bhurji Khan, whose way of training she often said had shaped her own. Namita Devidayal, who studied with her for twenty-five years, wrote The Music Room around her life and the lineage of Alladiya Khan and Kesarbai Kerkar.