भास्करबुवा बखले

Bhaskarbuwa Bakhale (17 October 1869 – 8 April 1922) was one of those rare Hindustani masters who absorbed the training of not one but three gharanas — and then spent the entire fortune on the Marathi stage. Born Bhaskar Raghunath Bakhale in the village of Kathor in Baroda State, he joined the Kirloskar Natak Mandali as a boy, where his voice drew notice as a child performer. Then began the long penance of taalim: Faiz Mohammed Khan of Gwalior, Nathan Khan of Agra, and Ustad Alladiya Khan of Jaipur-Atrauli — three traditions met in one throat, and connoisseurs called him 'Dev Gandharva', the celestial singer.

In 1911 he founded the Bharat Gayan Samaj in Pune, frontline work in the Marathi effort to institutionalise classical music education. But history remembers him most as the composer of the Gandharva Natak Mandali: his settings for Sangeet Swayamvar (1916), carried by Bal Gandharva's voice, reached every Maharashtrian household and became the golden age of natya sangeet. Disciples like Bal Gandharva and Master Krishnarao were the living legacy of his teaching.

He died in Pune on 8 April 1922. Records of his own voice are of the rarest; but his music still sounds wherever a pad from Swayamvar is sung.

Born in 1869 at Kathor in Baroda State, Bakhale was apprenticed young to the theatre — a boy performer with the Kirloskar Natak Mandali — before classical taalim claimed him. The unusual order of his education (stage first, gharana later) explains his life's work: he never saw a wall between the concert raag and the theatre song.

After years under Faiz Mohammed Khan (Gwalior), Nathan Khan (Agra) and Alladiya Khan (Jaipur-Atrauli), Bakhale emerged as one of the most complete khayal singers of his generation — 'Dev Gandharva' to the cognoscenti. He taught widely, founded the Bharat Gayan Samaj (Pune, 1911), and as music director of the Gandharva Natak Mandali set the pads of Sangeet Swayamvar (1916) and Sangeet Draupadi (1920), defining the natya sangeet idiom at its peak. His premature death in 1922 was mourned as the fall of a whole school.

Bakhale's legacy is triple: a synthesis of three gharanas admired as the era's most complete vocalism; the institutionalising impulse of the Bharat Gayan Samaj; and above all the Swayamvar score — the proof that raagdari could be popular without being diluted. Every natya sangeet singer since stands in his debt, and through Bal Gandharva's discs his tunes trained the mass ear that Hindi film music would later inherit.

His khayal carried Gwalior's clean ashtang grammar, Agra's rhythmic attack and Jaipur's intricate raag-craft. As a composer for the stage he worked like a jeweller: choosing bandish-frames that an actor could carry, trimming ornament to the dramatic moment, keeping the raag's face recognisable in a three-minute pad. His settings are why natya sangeet is classical music's most successful popular embassy.