Pandit Shailesh Bhagwat

Shailesh Bhagwat played the flute as a boy before the sound of the shehnai drew him to it. He trained first with the shehnai player Pandit Aurangabadkar and the sitar player Maruti Patil, and pressed Ustad Bismillah Khan repeatedly to accept him as a student whenever the Ustad performed in Maharashtra.

He describes forty years spent following his guru — travelling to concerts, carrying his bags, and living in his house in Benares as a gurukul. From that long apprenticeship he took both a method and a repertoire: the unhurried badhat of a raga in the gayaki ang, and rare ragas such as Shivamat-Bhairav, Shahana-Bahar, Hans-Narayan, Kirwani, Hanskinkini and Meghranjani, which he still programmes in concert.

Based in Mumbai, he performs at festivals in India and abroad — among them the Harivallabh Sangeet Sammelan in Jalandhar, where he played at the 142nd gathering in 2017 and again at the 150th in December 2025 — and speaks openly about the shehnai's retreat from the concert stage into temples and ceremonial occasions.

He follows his guru's approach: a raga explored at length before taans are added, and phrasing modelled on the singing voice. His programmes lean on rare ragas learnt directly from Bismillah Khan.