Gangubai Hangal

Gangubai Hangal (born March 13, 1913, Dharwad, British India—died July 21, 2009, Hubli, Karnataka, India) was an Indian vocalist in the Hindustani (North Indian) classical tradition and doyenne of the Kirana gharana (community of performers who share a distinctive musical style). She was especially admired for her performances of songs of the khayal genre over the course of a career that spanned nearly seven decades.

Hangal was born into a musical family. Both her mother and her grandmother were established musicians in the Carnatic (South Indian) tradition, although her mother also maintained a strong interest in Hindustani music. Hangal learned the basics of Indian music—most notably, the technique of singing using the traditional sargam, or solmization, syllables—from her mother and began performing publicly before she had reached her teenage years. When she was 13, Hangal began to train in the Hindustani tradition at a music academy in the city of Hubli (now Hubli-Dharwad), near her family’s home in Dharwad. At age 15 she became a disciple of the virtuosic Hindustani vocalist Sawai Gandharva, who was an exponent of the Kirana gharana.

Although Gandharva’s home village was near Hubli, he was living elsewhere when he took Hangal as his student. Consequently, Hangal trained with him only intermittently, whenever he visited the area to check on his property. In the meantime, she studied with her mother and another local musician, Dattopant Desai. Almost a decade passed before Gandharva moved back to his village and Hangal was able to work with him more intensively. She studied nearly every day with Gandharva for three years, until his health began to fail in 1941. The following year Gandharva died. Despite her relatively short and sporadic discipleship with the master, Hangal was most strongly influenced in her artistry by Gandharva. Indeed, she closely adhered to his style—and more broadly, to that of the Kirana gharana—throughout her career.

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Hangal’s reputation as a virtuoso started to rise in the mid-1930s, when she began to make recordings and perform more frequently outside her immediate community. By the early 1940s, she had become a well-known figure in Hindustani music as a result of her broadcasts on All India Radio and her busy schedule of concert appearances across the country. Initially, she sang bhajans, or Hindu devotional songs, light Marathi-language songs, and semiclassical songs known as thumris, as well as khayal classical songs. By the mid-1940s, however, she had shifted her focus almost fully to khayal.

Hangal’s vocal quality, sensitivity to pitch and melody, and technical proficiency were among the most remarkable features of her style. She sang with a distinctively bold, almost masculine, tone. She typically introduced the melodic framework—the raga—of each piece gradually, so that the audience could savor and recognize the importance of each pitch. Impeccably intoned and ornamented passages of improvisation using solmization syllables also figured prominently in her performances.

For her contribution to Indian classical music, Hangal received several honors. In 1973 she received the Sangeet Natak Akademi (India’s national academy of music, dance, and drama) award. Hangal was also awarded the Padma Bhushan (1971) and the Padma Vibhushan (2002), two of India’s highest civilian honors.