From Pune to Patiala and beyond, how vocalist Rajabhau Deo spent his life lost in music

The stories of Rajabhau Deo and his daughter Alka Deo Marulkar are a reminder of how packed the lives of Indian classical musicians have always been behind the façade of the steady, apparently uneventful pursuit of an all-consuming art form.

Rajabhau Deo’s frequent travels, trials and displacements over the last century offer rare glimpses of not only the study and performance of Hindustani music but also of key moments in the subcontinent’s political and social history. That is evident from his spirited autobiography Gaan Ramayya (Lost in Music), a string of anecdotes from his life dictated to his daughter Alka Deo Marulkar over a two-year period. It was released in Marathi on his 75th birthday in 1992.

Rajabhau Deo died in 2008

In the stories, which Marulkar and I plan to translate into Hindi and English, we see diverse communities across undivided India with a lens that seems to change its magnification at will, highlighting snatches of conversations between musicians at a soiree in Lahore, negotiating concert rates with a hard-nosed organiser in Jalandhar before dwelling on a precious memory of the revered Alauddin Khan hugging Rajabhau Deo after hearing him at a recording session for All India Radio in Reva in 1943 and hailing him as “Chota...

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