Vidushi Hirabai Barodekar

Hirabai Barodekar was born at Miraj on 29 May 1905 and named Champakali, the eldest daughter of Ustad Abdul Karim Khan and Tarabai Mane. Her parents separated in 1922 and she received only limited teaching from her father; her first training came from her elder brother Sureshbabu Mane, and her later training from Abdul Wahid Khan, her father's cousin and a doyen of the Kirana gharana.

She gave her first public performance at fifteen, under the patronage of Kesarbai Kerkar, and remained active as a performer from about 1920 until 1980. She was the first artist in India to give ticketed concerts, and a pioneer of public concerts by women — a change in how classical music reached its audience as much as a personal career. She founded a music school for girls, the Nutan Sangeet Vidyalaya, which also staged plays, and appeared in films including Suvarna Mandir, Pratibha, Janabai and Municipality. She often performed with her younger sister Saraswati Rane. She recorded early and widely; her 78 rpm discs were later reissued.

On 15 August 1947 she sang Vande Mataram from the Red Fort in Delhi on the day of India's independence. She received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1965 and the Padma Bhushan in 1970, and was known by the title Gaanhira. She died on 20 November 1989. The annual Sureshbabu–Hirabai Smruti Sangeet Samaroh, begun by her disciple Prabha Atre in 1992, commemorates her and her brother.

Her mother Tarabai Mane was the daughter of Sardar Maruti Rao Mane, a brother of the Rajmata of the princely state of Baroda; Abdul Karim Khan was court musician at Baroda and taught her, and when the two married against her parents' wishes the couple had to leave the state. Of their five children, all five became known under the Mane and Badodekar names — Sureshbabu Mane, Krishnarao Mane, Hirabai, Kamalabai Badodekar and Saraswatibai Rane. The Rajan Parrikar Music Archive records that besides her brother and Abdul Wahid Khan she was trained by several eminent musicians of the day, among them Ramkrishnabuwa Vaze, Balkrishnabuwa Kapileshwari and Govindrao Tembe. She was equally at home in khayal, thumri, Marathi natya sangeet, bhajan and bhavgeet, and was highly regarded as a stage actress in Maharashtra and Goa; her rendition of the "taar sa" became a hallmark. Her disciples included Prabha Atre, Vrinda Limaye and Bakul Pandit as well as her sister Saraswati Rane. Writing on her death in November 1989, the critic Mohan Nadkarni called that year the darkest in the annals of Hindustani music, Hirabai being the last in a run of deaths within four months that also took Krishnarao Shankar Pandit, Ram Marathe, Bahadur Khan and Munawwar Ali Khan.

She sang khayal, thumri, Marathi natya sangeet and bhajan, and is credited with carrying Kirana singing to a much wider public than it had reached before. Her rendition of the sustained upper Sa — "taar Sa" — was a signature of her concerts. Her disciples include Saraswati Rane, Manik Varma, Prabha Atre, Malati Pande, Janaki Iyer, Shaila Pandit and Sulabha Thakar.