पी. मधुकर

P. Madhukar — Madhukar Gangadhar Pednekar, credited in films as Pandit Madhukar — is remembered above all as one of the greatest harmonium players India has produced, hailed in his lifetime as 'Harmonium Samrat'. Born in Bombay in 1916 to a musical family with roots in Malpem village in Goa's Pednem region, he began learning harmonium at eight from his maternal uncle Shankarrao Rajapurkar and later became a disciple of Annasaheb Mainkar of Sangli, a harmonium player and film music director. Around 1934 he joined the His Master's Voice recording company, and after apprenticing under Mainkar on film scores he emerged as a music director in his own right, composing for Marathi, Hindi and Telugu films including Chokha Mela, Chaliteel Shejari, Dharampatni and Savitri. On Vakil Saheb (1943), directed by Mohan Sinha, he shared the music credit with his guru Mainkar, producing songs such as 'Khushi Ka Din Aaya' and 'Suno Ri Sajni Mori'. As a soloist he transformed harmonium technique, importing the dir-dir of the sitar and the veena's draan into his fingering, and he was an early experimenter with the clavioline in Indian music. He founded the Tansen Sangeet Vidyalaya in Bombay, and his style lived on through disciples such as Tulsidas Borkar and Anant Kemkar. He died in 1967.