Kesarbai Kerkar

Kesarbai Kerkar was born on 13 July 1892 at Keri in Ponda, Goa. She began learning at about eight, and then — by her own account and that of later writers — spent close to two decades moving between teachers before she found the one she wanted.

That was Ustad Alladiya Khan, founder of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana, with whom she studied for many years and became the leading disciple. Earlier, briefer periods of study are attributed to Abdul Karim Khan, Ramkrishnabuwa Vaze and Bhaskarbuwa Bakhle, though these rest on specialist rather than first-rank sources.

She performed publicly from around 1930. She was famously selective about where she sang, who heard her, and what was recorded, and she guarded her recordings closely — a reputation for severity that went with an equally strong reputation for perfection.

Rabindranath Tagore, having heard her sing, is credited with the praise that gave her the title Surashri. In March 1953 she received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award from President Rajendra Prasad, and in 1969 the Padma Bhushan.

She died in Bombay on 16 September 1977. That same year her recording of the Bhairavi bandish "Jaat Kahan Ho" was placed on the Voyager Golden Record — the only Hindustani vocal music aboard the two Voyager spacecraft, and now the furthest-travelled Indian music there is.

The Jaipur-Atrauli style Kesarbai inherited from Alladiya Khan is among the most demanding in Hindustani music: uncommon and compound ragas, long-breathed phrases that cut across the tala rather than settling into it, and taans of considerable intricacy delivered without visible effort. She sang it with a firmness of pitch that later musicians still cite.

Her refusal to be recorded freely means the surviving body of her work is small, which makes each item of it heavily studied. Her lasting contribution is a standard rather than a repertoire — an insistence that the raga be presented complete and exactly, and that the audience come to the music rather than the music to the audience.