Pandit Ramakant Gundecha

Ramakant Gundecha grew up in Ujjain and, like his elder brother Umakant, came to dhrupad through college study rather than family inheritance. The brothers moved to Bhopal in 1981 on a Madhya Pradesh government scholarship to train at the state Dhrupad Kendra under Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar, with additional training from Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, and began performing publicly in 1985.

Colleagues remembered him as the more outspoken advocate of the two for dhrupad's revival, and as concerned to make the duo's concerts lucid and melodic rather than academic. The dhrupad singer Pandit Uday Bhawalkar, who first met the brothers in Ujjain in 1974, called his death an irreparable loss for dhrupad; the vocalist Pandit Nirmalya Dey, a fellow student, credited the brothers with creating new dhrupad compositions.

He died of a heart attack on 8 November 2019 while travelling by train to Pune, aged 57, and was cremated in Bhopal the following day. His son Anant Gundecha subsequently began performing alongside Umakant.

With Umakant he received the Padma Shri in 2012 and, according to the Dhrupad Sansthan's own account, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award of 2017.

In April 2021 the BBC reported allegations of sexual harassment and assault by former students of the Dhrupad Sansthan against all three Gundecha brothers, including an allegation of rape against Ramakant, who had died in 2019 and so never answered them. Umakant and Akhilesh denied the allegations made against them. The report is noted here because it is a matter of substantial public record about the school and the musicians who founded it.

He sang the lower and often the rhythmically assertive line of the Gundecha duet, in the Dagar vani manner of alap in nom-tom syllables followed by composed dhrupad with pakhawaj.