Mogubai Kurdikar

Mogubai Kurdikar was born Mogara Kurdikar on 15 July 1904 in the village of Kurdi in Portuguese Goa. Little is recorded of her father; her mother Jayashreebai was known locally as a gifted singer. Her first lessons came in 1913 from a holy man at the Shri Damodar Sansthaan in Zambaulim, arranged by her mother, who then took her to a travelling theatre company that accepted her as an actress.

Her mother died in 1914, and she went on to the Satarkar Stree Sangeet Mandali, playing roles in sangeet nataks and taking music lessons there from Chintobuwa Gurav, a student of Bhaskarbuwa Bakhale. She also learned Kathak from Ramlal and was trained in ghazal by Dattaramji Nanodkar. After a conflict at the company she was expelled, and in 1919 an aunt took her to Sangli for medical treatment, where she began learning from the local recording artist Inayat Khan R. Pathan.

Alladiya Khan was in Sangli at the same time for treatment and heard her practising as he passed her lodgings. He climbed the stairs to find the singer, asked her to continue, and offered to teach her at once. After eighteen months he moved to Bombay and she followed in 1922. Her training there was repeatedly interrupted: wealthier and more powerful students of Khan pressed him not to take other disciples, and she was forced to leave his tutelage in the early 1920s. She turned to Bashir Hussain Khan of the Agra gharana in 1924, performing the ganda bandhan ceremony with him in 1926, and briefly to his brother Vilayat Hussain Khan. Alladiya Khan then sent his younger brother Haider Khan to teach her, but that too was ended after eight months under the same pressure. She kept up her riyaz until Khan returned to teach her himself; the ganda bandhan with him was performed in 1934 and her training continued until his death in 1946.

From 1940 she toured widely and broadcast on All India Radio, becoming known alongside Kesarbai Kerkar, Laxmibai Jadhav and Azmat Hussain Khan as a leading exponent of the gharana. She married Madhavdas Bhatia in 1923; he died in 1939, leaving her with three school-age children. She died in Mumbai on 10 February 2001.

Her singing was known for restraint, austerity and a purist's reticence — she avoided performing thumri and natya sangeet in public to protect that standing. She composed khayals that she and her disciples made current, among them "Aba kaise kara aaun" in Shuddha Nat, "Aba Shyama na aae" in Savani Nat and "Banavari Shyama more" in Sampurna Malkauns, and she is credited with the antara of "Khelana aae ri naveli nara" in Basanti Kedar, to Haider Khan's asthai. She taught a large number of students and is remembered for beginning an extensive lineage of women musicians.