Bhimsen Joshi - Early Life

Early Life

Joshi was born into a Kannada family in the town of Ron, which was then in Dharwar District in the Bombay Presidency, now the northern part of Karnataka state in India. His father, Gururaj Joshi, was a school teacher. Bhimsen was the eldest in a family of 16 siblings. Some of the siblings still live in their ancestral home in Gadag. Bhimsen lost his mother when he was young, and his step mother then raised him.

He also sought out households where he heard musicians lived and worked as servants. In a particularly memorable episode, the young Joshi worked as a servant at famous Bengali actor and Dhrupad vocalist Pahari Sanyal's house in Calcutta (present day Kolkata) on a Rs 5 a month wage, because he heard that the actor was very fond of music. He quit after three months, because his boss never found time to listen to him. Years later, Joshi stunned the music-loving Sanyal at a music conference saying: "I am the same Joshi who used to work at your place." Finally, the travel-weary prodigal son returned home to train himself under Pandit Rambhau Kundgolkar a.k.a Sawai Gandharva of the fabled Kirana Gharana school of music at Kundgol, the guru's hometown close to Gadag. His parents lived initially with his grandfather as tenants of a Kulkarni household, but then moved to Gadag (now a district headquarter).

As a child, Joshi's craving for music was evident to his family as he managed to lay his hands on a 'tanpura' used by his 'Kirtankar' grandfather, which had been kept away from his gaze at home. Music had such a magnetic pull over him that a 'bhajan singing' procession or just 'azaan' from a nearby mosque was said to draw him out of house.