Bhimsen Joshi

Bhimsen Joshi was born on 4 February 1922 in a Kannada[6] Deshastha Madhva Brahmin family[7] to Gururajrao Joshi and Godavaribai at Gadag in Dharwad district that was then in the Bombay Presidency of British India.[8][9] His father, Gururaj Joshi, was a school teacher. Bhimsen was the eldest among 16 siblings. He lost his mother at a young age.[10]

As a child, Joshi was fascinated with music and musical instruments like the harmonium and tanpura[11] and would often follow processions accompanied by music bands. This exercise often tired him and he would curl up somewhere and sleep, forcing his parents to go to the police after efforts to trace him failed. Fed up, his father Gururajacharya Joshi came up with the solution, writing "son of teacher Joshi" on Joshi's shirts. This worked and those who found the boy sleeping would safely deposit him back to his house.[12]

His first music teacher was Channappa of Kurtakoti, who had trained with the veteran singer Inayat Khan. After learning Ragas Bhairav and Bhimpalasi, the one and only unique vigorous style of rendering he developed along with advanced trainings by other teachers is attributed to the basic training he received from Channappa. Joshi next went to Pandit Shyamacharya Joshi, who hailed from Bagalkot and was a priest and classical singer. Pandit Shyamacharya taught him to sing as well as play the harmonium. Shamacharya Joshi was a descendant of Great Haridasa Shree Mahipati Dasaru. As revealed by Shyamacharya Joshi himself when he was alive, it was a turning point in Joshi's life that Shyamacharya Joshi went to Bombay for recording his songs by HMV where Joshi also accompanied him and due to ill health Shyamacharya Joshi returned to Bagalkot after recording few songs and asked Joshi to render the rest of the songs which Joshi did and this proved to be a major breakthrough for Joshi in the initial stage of his career.[13]

Joshi first performed live in 1941 at the age of 19. His debut album, containing a few devotional songs in Marathi and Hindi, was released by HMV the next year in 1942. Later Joshi moved to Mumbai in 1943 and worked as a radio artist. His performance at a concert in 1946 to celebrate his guru Sawai Gandharva's 60th birthday won him accolades both from the audience and his guru.[17] In 1984, he received his 1st Platinum Disc, being the first Hindustani Vocalist to receive the award.[18]

Playback singing

Joshi sang for several films, including Basant Bahar (1956) with Manna Dey, in Marathi movie "Swayamvar zale Siteche" (1964) for famous song "Ramya Hi Swargahun lanka", in Kannada movie Sandhya Raga (1966) where he has sung extensively. It includes a song "e pariya sobagu" rendered in both Hindustani and Carnatic (Karnataka shastriya sangeetha) styles along with M. Balamuralikrishna. He sang Birbal My Brother (1973) with Pandit Jasraj. He also sang for the Bengali film Tansen (1958) and Bollywood Movie Ankahee (1985) which later fetched him National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer.[22] His song 'Bhagyadalakshmi baaramma', a Purandara Dasa composition, was used by Anant Nag and Shankar Nag in the Kannada film Nodi Swami Naavu Irodhu Heege.[19] He also sang as a playback singer for the Marathi film Gulacha Ganapati, produced and directed by P. L. Deshpande[23]

Then President of India A. P. J. Abdul Kalam meeting Joshi in 2007

Joshi being conferred Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in 2009.

A classicist by training and temperament, Joshi was renowned for having evolved an approach that sought to achieve a balance between what may be termed as "traditional values and mass-culture tastes" and as such he went on to have supposedly the largest commercially recorded repertoire in Hindustani vocal music. Pt. Joshi's iconic status in the music world has earned him a whole generation of suni shagirds who by merely listening to him have picked up his style and not through any formal tutelage. His greatest endeavour in perpetuating his legacy could be the Sawai Gandharva Festival held at Pune annually since the year 1953 which seeks to promote a certain music culture.[24]

Madhav Gudi, Prof Baldev Singh Bali, Narayan Deshpande, Shrikant Deshpande, Shrinivas Joshi, Anand Bhate and others are some of his more well-known disciples.[13]

Joshi married twice. His first wife was Sunanda Katti, the daughter of his maternal uncle, whom he married in 1944. He had four children from Sunanda; Raghavendra, Usha, Sumangala, and Anand.[25] In 1951, he married Vatsala Mudholkar, his co-actor in the Kannada play Bhagya-Shree. Bigamous marriages among Hindus were prohibited by law in the Bombay Presidency; so he took up residency in Nagpur (capital of Central Province and Berar in 1951) where bigamy was allowed and married there for the second time. He did not divorce or separate from Sunanda. With Vatsala, he had three children; Jayant, Shubhada, and Shrinivas Joshi.[13] Initially, both his wives and families lived together, but when this did not work out, his first wife moved out with the family to live in a house in Limayewadi in Sadashiv Peth, Pune, where Joshi continued to visit them.[24][26]

Joshi struggled with alcoholism, which he overcame by the late 1970s.[27]

Outside of music, Joshi was passionate about cars and had a deep knowledge of auto mechanics.[28]

Joshi was admitted to Sahyadri Super Speciality Hospital on 31 December 2010 with gastrointestinal bleeding and bilateral pneumonia. Due to difficulty in breathing, he was put on ventilator support. He suffered convulsions and was put on dialysis too during his stay in hospital. Though he recovered briefly for three days when he was taken off the ventilator, his condition deteriorated thereafter. He died on 24 January 2011 .[29] He was cremated at Vaikunth Crematorium in Pune with full state honours.[30]

• 1972 – Padma Shri[33]
• 1976 – Sangeet Natak Akademi Award[33]
• 1985 – Padma Bhushan[33]
• 1985 – National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer
• 1986 – "First platinum disc"[34]
• 1999 – Padma Vibhushan[33]
• 2000 – "Aditya Vikram Birla Kalashikhar Puraskar"[35]
• 2002 – Maharashtra Bhushan[36]
• 2003 – "Swathi Sangeetha Puraskaram" by Government of Kerala[37]
• 2005 – Karnataka Ratna[38]
• 2008 – Bharat Ratna[33]
• 2008 – "Swami Haridas Award"[39]
• 2009 – "Lifetime achievement award" by Delhi government[40]
• 2010 – "S V Narayanaswamy Rao National Award" by Rama Seva Mandali, Bangalore
• 2017 – Bharatratna Pandit Bhimsen Joshi Hospital By Mira Bhayander Municipal Corporation, Bhayander West

• Nadkarni, Mohan (1983). Bhimsen Joshi: the man and his music. Prism Communications.
• Nadkarni, Mohan (1994). Bhimsen Joshi: a biography. Indus, New Delhi. ISBN 81-7223-126-1.
• Majumdar, Abhik (2004). Bhimsen Joshi: A Passion for Music. Rupa & Co. ISBN 81-291-0354-0.
• Pt. Bhimsen Joshi, a biography by Dr Sadanand Kanavalli in Kannada

• Bhimsen Joshi at Encyclopædia Britannica
• Bhimsen Joshi at The Economist
• Bhimsen Joshi Picture Album
• Bhimsen Joshi: List of Classical Vocal Recordings
• A films division documentary on Bhimsen Joshi
• A blog on recitals of Bhimsen Joshi