Mogubai Kurdikar
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Mogubai Kurdikar (July 15, 1904 – February 10, 2001) was one of the most respected North Indian classical singers of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana (school), student of Alladiya Khan and mother of Kishori Amonkar, one of the classical superstars of post-Independence India.
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[edit] Early years
Mogu Kurdikar was born in Kurdi village in then Portuguese Goa, into a Kalavant community. At this time, many Kalavant musicians of Goa were famous, and it was popular to seek musical training for one's children. Mogu's mother, Jayshreebai, brought her daughter (age 10) to the temple at Zambavli, where she arranged for a wandering holyman to teach her for some time, and later to an ambulating theatre company, the Chandreshwar Bhootnath Sangeet Mandali, who took Mogu aboard as an actress.
During Mogu's time with Chandreshwar Bhootnath, her mother died, and it is said that on her deathbed she told Mogu that her soul would not rest in peace until the girl was a famous singer. The theatre company soon went bankrupt and Mogu was drafted by the rivalling Satarkar Stree Sangeet Mandali, where she found local fame playing parts such as Kinkini in Punyaprabhav and the title role in Subhadra. Other kinds of drama ensued however between Mogu and one of the older women in the company, who kicked her out. She now moved to Sangli, where she took some lessons from Inayat Khan of the Rampur-Seheswan gharana, but the Ustad soon decided not to teach her further. These years of recurring rejection must have been hard on a young girl with heavy family expectations.
[edit] Alladiya Khan and the power struggle in Bombay
At this time, vocalist legend Gaansamrat Alladiya Khan Saheb was in Sangli for medical treatment, and on his way to and from his doctor's, he walked by Mogu's residence, where he would hear her practice what she had learnt from Inayat Khan. One day he stopped, introduced himself and offered to teach her. Young Mogu of course agreed, but despite Alladiya's fame, she had not heard of him – it was not until some time later, when she observed dignitaries bow down to him, that she fully realised his standing.
After some eighteen months, Alladiya Khan moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) , and Mogu followed. Thus begun a time of intrigue in Bombay's high-society and classical music circles.
For Alladiya was supported in Bombay by wealthy patrons in exchange for music teaching, and they would not let him take other students. In desperation, Mogu turned to Bashir Khan of the Agra gharana, who agreed to teach her if she would perform the formal gandha-bandan (thread-tying) ceremony of guru-shishya discipleship with fellow Agra ustad Vilayat Hussein Khan. This came to happen, and Alladiya heard of it. He demanded that she stop the discipleship and instead go to his brother, Hyder Khan. But as the Agra ustads had a lot of clout, Mogu hesitated, and solicited a promise that Alladiya would teach her himself in the future if Hyder ever failed to do so. A deal was worked out, Hyder taught her for a while, but Alladiya's rich and powerful students were putting a lot of pressure on him to put a stop to it, increasingly jealous of her progress. About 1930, Alladiya felt forced to persuade his brother to stop teaching and leave town, but came clean to the heartbroken Mogu about what had happened, essentially breaking his promise.
At this stage in her career, Mogu could likely have supported herself as a performer. But she chose not to. Not content with the prospect of being just another name on the scene, she wanted to become the best, the foremost representative of a tradition (as she has observed in Alladiya Khan). She gave birth to a daughter, Kishori, and kept practicing on her own, until one day Alladiya came back to her. They performed the gandha-bandan, and he now kept teaching her to the end of his life. She became one of the topmost singers in North India, even hailed as "the queen" by Alladiya in public. She received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1968 and the Sangeet Research Academy Award in 1980, and was decorated with the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour for service to the nation, in 1974.
[edit] Legacy
Mogubai Kurdikar trained students such as Padma Talwalkar, Kamal Tambe, Vamanrao Deshpande, Suhasini Mulgaonkar, Babanrao Haldankar, but above all her daughter, Kishori Amonkar, arguably the biggest female vocalist in Hindustani music in the latter half of the 20th Century. Mogubai did not keep recording when Kishori's career took off, but some of her old recordings have been reissued as one volume of RPG Music's Vintage 78 RPM Recordings on CD series (CDNF150596).
[edit] Footnotes
^ Gopalkrishna Bhobe: Kalaatm Gomantak ("Talented Goa")
^ This was at a time when it was difficult for classical musicians, in however high esteem, to support themselves. The subcontinent's many royal courts had supported the music for centuries, but there was no large middle class and no widespread public appreciation; now the courts were on the remove, and the budding recording industry did not have anything like today's large commercial base.
