Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi acknowledged as the leading light and descendant of the Kirana Gharana. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi is the renowned "Khayal" Singer of Hindustani classical music tradition.

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, the diviner was born on 14th February 1922 in idyllic village a very small town of Karnataka namely Gadag. He was born to a conservative schoolmaster Gururaj who has written a slender book in Kannada, Naad-Putra, chronicling the life-story of his illustrious son. Uncle Govindaacharya was a writer and publisher. According to the family folklore, he would often be seen standing entranced outside a record shop on the main street of Gadag, listening to Fagwaa Brij Dekhan Ko, a Raag Basant composition rendered by Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, the founder-father of the Kirana gharana. Little did the boy then know that he was destined to be the brightest jewel of the gharana. It was his wife Vatsalabai who was credited with having effectively intervened to wean her illustrious husband away from the alcohol. Vatsalabai, Panditji`s second wife, was his disciple. Panditji was barely out of his teens when he married his uncle`s daughter. The second marriage may have brought some tension in the family in the initial years, but Panditji tackled the question of dual loyalty with finesse.

He had learnt to divide his loyalties between music and a large dollop of ghee on his plate of rice during lunch. However, on a sultry afternoon in the summer of 1932, the lad earned a few harsh words from his mother for demanding an extra spoon of the delicacy. In that year hurt by the rebuked, at the age of 11years, this necromancer left his home on his own to learn singing through the master-disciple tradition or `Guru-shishya` tradition. For the next two years, the adolescent singer was hopping from one long-distance train to another in search of a guru. For Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, the ticket less journey turned out to be a toilsome trek to stardom. Panditji had remarked evocatively in a conversation a few years ago: "This criss-cross tour which I then undertook, particularly my tryst with north India, gave me an opportunity to get first-hand knowledge of a variety of trends and styles that define the quintessence of Indian music".

He spent three years in Gwalior, Lucknow and Rampur in North India trying to find a good guru. Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan, who was the most prized musician of the Scindias` durbar of Gwalior, took Panditji under his wings and taught him the rudiments of Raag Maarwa and Raag Puriyaa. Even today, Panditji recalls with gratitude the days he spent with Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan, the well-known sarodiya and father of Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. The next destination was Calcutta where renowned actor Pahari Sanyal has been impressed by the vocal skills of the young visitor, offered him the job of an errand boy. Decades later, Panditji found himself in a close encounter with Sanyal after a music concert in Calcutta. "I am the boy who used to serve you tea," he reminded the New Theatre`s actor. In Punjab, Jalandhar was the next destination for him. Here, Panditji came to know from vocalist Vinayakraobuwa Patwardhan the teaching abilities of well-known singer Pandit Rambhau Kundgolkar, aka Sawai Gandharva, who, incidentally, lived in Kundgol, a few kilometres away from Gadag.

His father succeeded in tracking him and bringing young Bhimsen back home. The Bhimsen joshi returned home only to goad his father into sending him to Sawai Gandharva for training in classical music. At a young age he was deeply moved by a recording of Abdul Karim Khan, a great master of the Kirana gharana. In 1936 Sawai Gandharva, a disciple of Ustad Abdul Karim Khan well-known Hindustani vocalist to make the Kirana Gharana famous agreed to teach Bhimsen in Hindustani Classical music.

The teacher taught him the basics of khayal-gayaki, a disheartening task in view of the post-puberty changes in the pupil`s tender vocal chords. Rigorous riyaaz was followed by hours of household responsibilities, done dutifully as a mark of service to the hard-to-please guru. Between 1936 and 1940 Bhimsen Joshi stayed with Sawai Gandharva from where started his rigorous training under him. While fetching pails of water from a faraway well, Bhimsen perfected the patterns of Raag Multaani or Raag Todi. His first public concert, to mark the shashtyabdipoorti (60th birthday) of his guru Sawai Gandharva, was held in Pune in January 1946. He has never looked back since. His training under Sawai Gandharva came to a sudden end because of some misunderstanding; Bhimsen went once again on a tour of north India.

After leaving his guru he set out on his own with a strict regimen of up to sixteen hours of daily riyaz (practice). His seemingly effortless performances are the result of relentless riyaz. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi has added his own distinctive style, excelling in gamakar, meend and tanakriya and adapting characteristics from other gharanas to create a unique vocal idiom. Panditji learnt to adapt to the changing times. In the era of rap and reggae, he steadfastly adhered to the khayal-gayaki, even while striving to strike a balance between the common and the puritans. Once he remarked in a contemplative mood ""In the good old days, connoisseurs loved to sit through the entire night listening to singers…"

For over four decades Pandit Bhimsen Joshi has led the renaissance of Indian classical music with the passion and power of a one-man chorus. Of a single-pointed thirst for music it is an epic saga of struggle. That is why Pandit Bhimsen Joshi has been a daredevil, a risk-taker for most of his life. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi has been honored with the "Padma Shree" in 1972 the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1976 and the Padma Bhushan in 1985. He earned the first platinum disc in the year 1986.

Well-known singer Pandit Pheroze Dastur, Panditji`s `guru bhai`, feels that his style of presentation, dedication and capacity to draw the complete attention of the audience have been the major factors behind Panditji`s "tremendous accomplishments". Through his amazing absorption of the soul of various gayaki styles, he has created a unique blend, adding his own introspective aesthetic sense. His narrative and structure is never inaccurate and he presents his music where the listener finds the raga overwhelmed him from all sides. In the early 1970s with `Sant-Vaani`, a four-hour concert of devotional music that blended Purandardasa with Kabir, has been both a commercial success as well as an artistic accomplishment for him. Tulsidas Borkar, veteran harmonium player who has been his accompanist at numerous concerts says, "He is a man of few words. His is a Spartan lifestyle, even in America Panditji happily stuck to his staple `Jhunka-bhakar` meal ".

This down-to-earth person believes that an unsympathetic teacher and rigorous riyaaz with a bit of luck thrown in can make a good singer. Fortunately, the doyen`s success story has all the three ingredients. Apart from music Panditji is a keen admirer of automobiles. As he off repeated "Had I not been a classical singer, I would have loved to spend my entire life in a garage fine-tuning a Fiat or a Maruti". Well-known essayist and humourist P.G. Deshpande jokingly remarked once speaking at a function to felicitate Panditji, that the peripatetic vocalist who is a disciple of Gandharva should be known as `Hawai` (air-borne) Gandharva. In his own words "I am still a shaagird (student). I have a long way to go."