Pandit Jitendra Abhisheki

Born Ganesh Balawant Nawathe in the Goan village of Mangeshi on 21 September 1929, Jitendra Abhisheki grew up in a family attached to the Mangeshi temple. His father Balawantrao, a priest and kirtankar, taught him the first principles of Hindustani music; formal study followed with Girijabai Kelekar of nearby Bandora. He matriculated in 1949 and took a degree in Sanskrit literature.

In Mumbai he trained with Jagannathbuwa Purohit "Gunidas" of the Agra gharana and Gullubhai Jasdanwala of the Jaipur gharana, and later, on a Government of India scholarship, with Azmat Hussain Khan of the Khurja gharana. He learned ragas from Bade Ghulam Ali Khan of the Patiala gharana and compositions from Nivrittibua Sarnaik and Ratnakar Pai, and travelled to Allahabad to study bandishes with Ramashreya Jha "Ramrang". Critics have generally described the result not as allegiance to one gharana but as a personal synthesis, sometimes called the Abhisheki gayaki, built on gradual raga development through alaap rather than sargam.

He began at All India Radio in Mumbai, where Ravi Shankar was then music director, and from the early 1960s held a distinct place in a generation that also included Bhimsen Joshi, Kumar Gandharva, Mallikarjun Mansur and Jasraj. His compositions for Katyar Kaljat Ghusali (1967), Matsyagandha, Yayati Devyani and Hey Bandh Reshamache are credited with reviving Marathi Natya Sangeet, partly by shortening stage songs from the fifteen or twenty minutes of the concert mehfil to a length the theatre could carry. The opera Lekure Udand Jhali ran for more than a thousand performances. A Homi Bhabha Fellowship for 1969–71 took him to research and to teach at Ravi Shankar's school in the United States, and he toured with the Music Festival from India in 1974.

He taught, without fee, in the guru-shishya tradition — beginning kharaj practice with his students at around a quarter to four in the morning — and his disciples include his son Shounak Abhisheki, Shubha Mudgal, Devaki Pandit, Asha Khadilkar, Prabhakar Karekar, Ajit Kadkade, Vijay Koparkar and Mahesh Kale. He was appointed Padma Shri in 1988 and received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1989. He died in Pune on 7 November 1998. A festival in his memory has been held annually in Goa since 2004.

A style assembled from the Agra, Jaipur-Atrauli and Khurja schools with Patiala influences, unusual among male singers of his generation for its thumri, and inseparable from his work as a composer for the Marathi stage.