Pandit Bhavani Shankar

Bhavani Shankar was born in 1956 into a musical family and began studying both pakhawaj and tabla at the age of eight. His father, Babulalji, was a kathak performer, which is how he came to the drum so early.

He accompanied a wide range of Hindustani musicians, among them the bansuri player Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, the santoor player Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and the tabla players Ustad Zakir Hussain and Pandit Anindo Chatterjee. In a 2009 interview with The Hindu he also named Ustad Alla Rakha, Pandit Samta Prasad, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Pandit Jasraj among those he had performed with, and spoke of his recorded narrative works — a Sampoorna Ramayan set in pakhawaj bols among them — and of his film composing. He taught; his disciples Aniruddh Shirke and Ganesh Sawant accompanied him at that same Teen Prahar recital.

He received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Hindustani instrumental music (pakhawaj), presented by President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam in New Delhi on 26 October 2004. He died of cardiac arrest on 30 December 2023, after being hospitalised a few days earlier; his family confirmed the death to the Times of India.

His central argument, made directly in interview, was that the pakhawaj should not be left to languish as a purely accompanying instrument: solo pakhawaj recitals are rare, and he built a performing life around making them less so while also taking the drum into film scores and fusion projects.