Pandit Vasantrao Deshpande

Vasantrao Deshpande was born on 2 May 1920 at Murtizapur in Akola district, Vidarbha. His grandfather Govindrao Deshpande had trained in the Gwalior style and his father was a good tabla player, but the family fell into poverty within a few years of his birth. As a boy of about eight he was noticed by the film-maker Bhalji Pendharkar, who later cast him as the child Krishna in "Kaliya Mardan" (1935).

In Nagpur he began learning from Shankarrao Sapre, a disciple of Vishnu Digambar Paluskar — he first heard Sapre's class while sheltering from the rain on the stairs of his music school. Over the following years he took guidance from Aman Ali Khan and Anjanibai Malpekar of the Bhendibazaar gharana, Sureshbabu Mane of the Kirana gharana, Asad Ali Khan of Patiala, Ramkrishnabuwa Vaze of Gwalior, and Govindrao Tembe. The deepest influence was Dinanath Mangeshkar, whose stage singing he was said to continue more closely than anyone. A period in Lahore gave him Urdu, which served his ghazals and thumris.

To support his family he took a clerical job in the office of the Field Controller of Military Accounts in 1941, and kept it until 1965, singing all the while. In 1967 he created the role of Khansaheb in Purushottam Darvhekar's musical play "Katyar Kaljat Ghusli", which ran for more than a thousand performances; other plays included "Megh Malhar", "Tukaram", "He Bandh Reshmache" and "Varyavarchi Varaat". He sang for films, toured in India, the UK and the USSR, earned a doctorate in music, and is credited with creating raga Raj Kalyan, a form of Yaman without pancham.

His students included Chandrakant Limaye, Vijay Koparkar and Padmakar Kulkarni. He received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1982) and died in Pune on 30 July 1983. The Dr Vasantrao Deshpande Pratishthan, with his grandson Rahul Deshpande as a trustee, holds the Vasantotsav festival in Pune every January, and the 2022 film "Me Vasantrao" tells his story.

An eclectic singer who absorbed Kirana, Patiala, Bhendibazaar and Gwalior ideas, with sargam as a speciality and a theatre artist's gift for words. Equally at home in khayal, thumri, ghazal and natya sangeet.