Sunday, 14 October 2018

Annapurna Devi (1927-2018) passed away yesterday - May she rest in Peace


Yesterday one of India's greatest musicians passed away. Annapurna Devi was the daughter of Baba Ustad Allauddin Khan, sister of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and first wife of Pandit Ravi Shankar.
She was an outstanding Surbahar player and a great teacher. Amongst her many students the most famous is perhaps Hariprasad Chaurasia. I remember still very well that I bought all the LPs by him as they came out from the first one in 1968 till the ones in the 1980s. On the first LP he had not yet started to learn from Smt. Annapurna Devi, I think. Afterwards one could witness his progress in technique and in depth with each new LP.
Smt. Annapurna Devi lived, after her separation from Ravi Shankar in 1961, a very reclusive life and never performed in public. That is why there are hardly any recordings be her. The only ones - as far as I know - are the ones we posted in 2014
Maybe now some other recordings will show up.

https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/musician-annapurna-devi-passes-away/article25212211.ece
https://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-annapurna-devi-legendary-hindustani-classical-musician-dies-in-mumbai-2674886
https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/music/annapurna-devi-passes-away-5400232/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapurna_Devi





6 comments:

Rory said...

May her soul rest in peace after all she has given to Music and to all her disciples (Hariprasad Chaurasia, Nityanand Haldipur, etc).

rev.b said...

"If you put Ravi, Pannalal, and me on one side and put Annapurna on the other, yet her side of the scale would be heavier"
-Ustad Ali Akbar Khan

a dios said...

Brother when I try to download the 'wave' file it says-

The file you are trying to access is no longer available publicly.

Please contact the user who has shared this file with you.

Can you please re upload it maybe?

Thanks..

a dios said...

No one played surbahar like annapurna devi.
She plays from the depth of her heart.
Tawfik brother can you re upload the download links? I will be forever greatful..
Thanks

Tawfiq said...

The download links work perfectly. I just checked them and all four started to download automatically. The problem must be on your side. Sometimes it can be that too many users try to download at the same time and a limit is reached. The last two weeks there was an enormous amount of downloads of these files. You just have to be patient and retry till it works.

Yogesh Jani said...

Tawfiq-bhai, want to thank you from the depths of my heart for posting her music in 2014 when I first discovered this unbelievable genius of a kind there will never be again.

Would be very grateful if you can find and upload music of three of her finest dedicated disciples: Pt. Nityanand Haldipur (flute), Pt. Basant Kabra (sarod) and Pt. Pradeep Barot (sarod). The music of these artists that is available on youtube is testimony to Smt. Annapurna Deviji's unparalleled guidance.