| |||
| AWARD | ||||
| Bharat Ratna Bhimsen Joshi | ||||
Is it a case of better late than never? The ailing 86-year old is the first Hindustani classical vocalist to be so honoured with India's highest civilian award  | ||||
 | ||||
| ||||
| OUTLOOK WEB BUREAU ON BHIMSEN JOSHI | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Satyajit Ray M S Subbulakshmi Pandit Ravi Shankar Lata Mangeshkar Ustad Bismillah Khan And now, finally, the list of distinguished luminaries from the field of art and culture who have been conferred with the award ofBharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, has a sixth name: unquestionably, the greatest living Hindustani classical vocalist: Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. Bhimsen Joshi is the first Hindustani classical vocalist to be so awarded -- Carnatic vocalist MS Subbulakshmi in 1998 and Lata Mangeshkar in 2001 are the other singers who have received the honour. He will be the the 41st recipient overall since the award was instituted in 1954 (he would have been the 42nd, but the posthumous award to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1992 had to be withdrawn as the Award Committee could not give conclusive evidence of Netaji's death). Joshi has already been a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shree awards. He is the second Kannadiga, after Sir M Vishweshwaraiah, to have won this award. Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi was born in a Kannadiga Brahmin family on February 4, 1922 in Gadag, an idyllic village in Dharwad district of Karnataka. At a young age, he was deeply moved by a recording of Basant by Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, a great master of the Kirana gharana. All he wanted to do was to learn to sing. But his father, Gururaj, a Sanskrit scholar and a noted educationist, wanted young Bhimsen to study to become a doctor or an engineer instead. Things came to a head in 1933 when the 11-year-old young Bhimsen picked up a quarrel (thestory goes that he had asked for an extra spoonful of ghee with his meal, and was refused) and the young boy ran away from home -- in pursuit of a guru to learn music from. He headed first to Gwalior, as he had heard that apart from Lucknow and Rampur in north India, it was the best places to learn Hindustani classical music. He spent the next three years in these parts of north India, roaming the length and breadth of the country, paying for his ticket by singing bhajans and abhangs on trains, doing odd jobs and domestic chores in the houses of noted artistes in his endless quest for a proper guru and some music lessons. more |
No comments:
Post a Comment