सिद्धेश्वरी देवी

Siddheshwari Devi is among the great transmitters of the Banaras thumri tradition. Born into a musical family in Varanasi, she was a direct heir to the Purab-ang gayaki that treats the semi-classical genres — thumri, dadra, chaiti, kajri, hori — as a continuum of seasonal and devotional feeling. Her recordings for HMV and All India Radio from the 1940s onward preserved forms that were rapidly disappearing from salon culture. She was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1968.