Pandit Mallikarjun Mansur

Mallikarjun Mansur was born on 31 December 1910 at Mansur, a village a few kilometres from Dharwad. His father was the village headman, a farmer who supported musicians; his elder brother ran a Yakshagana troupe.

At about nine he appeared in a small role in a Yakshagana play, and was then sent with a travelling troupe, whose owner encouraged him to sing on stage. He was first trained in Carnatic music by Appaya Swamy, and then introduced to Hindustani music by Nilkanth Bua Alurmath of Miraj, of the Gwalior gharana.

In the late 1920s Nilkanth Bua took him to Alladiya Khan, who sent him to his elder son Manji Khan. After Manji Khan's early death he continued under the younger brother, Bhurji Khan, and it was that training which formed his mature style.

He worked as a music director for His Master's Voice and later as an adviser on music to All India Radio, and from 1978 to 1982 directed the Faculty of Fine Arts at Karnataka University, where he helped establish music as a subject of study.

He wrote an autobiography in Kannada, Nanna Rasayatre, translated into English by his son Rajashekhar Mansur, himself a vocalist. He died in Dharwad on 12 September 1992 and was given a state funeral; the Padma Vibhushan was conferred the same year.

Mansur is remembered above all for the ragas he kept alive. Shuddh Nat, Asa Jogiya, Hem Nat, Lachchhasakh, Khat, Shivmat Bhairav, Kabir Bhairav, Adambari Kedar, Bahaduri Todi and others were rarely heard from anyone else; he sang them as living music rather than as curiosities, and the Jaipur-Atrauli repertoire survives fuller because of it.

His singing was compact and fast-moving — brisk taans, close rhythmic work, and an architecture that revealed the raga by accumulation rather than by slow expansion. Early on his voice carried echoes of Manji Khan; later it became unmistakably his own, and for many listeners it defined what the Jaipur manner sounded like in the second half of the century.