Malini Awasthi

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Malini Awasthi is a name that resonates with folk music. A name, that personifies the quintessential aspect of Hindustani musical tradition and a name which became a chronicler of hitherto unsung tunes and voices of rural Uttar Pradesh. Born into a family of doctors in Kannauj district of Uttar Pradesh, she was initiated into music at a tender age of five years on the insistence of her foresighted mother. Neither her family nor she herself had any idea that this initiation will eventually add an important facet of folk music into the cultural landscape of the country. Transferable nature of her father’s job mostly, in the suburban regions of UP, exposed her to the real cultural ethos of the vernacular and helped her to develop a deep association with it. Along with her academic training from Mount Carmel College, she was fortunate to receive her first formal tutelage in classical music from renowned Ustad Rahat Ali Khan who was working with AIR, Gorakhpur. After coming to Lucknow, the epicenter of Awadhi culture, she got enrolled into Bhatkhande Music University and Lucknow University earning master’s with a gold medal in Hindustani classical vocal and MA in modern history, simultaneously. Her rigorous music training began after her marriage. World-renowned Thumri-queen Padma-Vibhushan Vidushi Girija Devi of Banaras gharana became her guru and adopted Malini as her ‘ganda-baandh’ disciple. This mode of ‘guru-shishya parampara’ learning became the turning point in her career and identity and chiseled her talent to the perfection. Under the guidance of Devi, she was exposed to ‘chaumukhi gayan’ of Benares and gained expertise in pure classical forms like khayaal and thumri along with semi-classical forms like Dadra, Kajri, Jhoola, Chaiti, and Hori. The Indigenous shade of Benares Gharana, the ‘purab-ang gaayki’, blended into her mellifluous singing and added richness to the vast repertoire of experience and training. Inclination and attachment for folk-music came as an automatic realization to Malini. After a lot of self-reflection and deliberations with the likes of great scholar Pt. Vidyaniwas Mishra and others, she ventured thoroughly into the realm of folk music of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar with the aim to redeem and re-establish its lost glory. Being an avid learner and a devoted artist, she admits that her training still continues.