Surashri Kesarbai Kerkar

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Hindustani vocalist Surashri Kesarbai Kerkar (b. July 13, 1892 – d. September 16, 1977) is considered one of the finest and most powerful Indian classical singers of the 20th century.

Born in the tiny village of Keri (also spelled "Querim"), Goa (then a Portuguese colony), Kerkar migrated at the age of 16 to Bombay where she studied with Ustad Alladiya Khan (1855-1946), the founder of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana, during the 1920s. She eventually achieved wide renown, performing regularly for aristocratic audiences. She was very particular about the representation of her work and consequently made only a few 78 rpm recordings, for the HMV and Broadcast labels.

Kerkar was awarded the decoration of Padma Bhushan by the government of India in 1969, and the government of the Indian state of Maharashtra conferred upon her the title of "Rajya Gayika," also in 1969. Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is said to have been very fond of Kerkar's singing. Her honorific title "Surashri" (or "Surshri") literally means "excellent voice" (sur meaning "voice" and shri meaning "excellent).

In her ancestral village of Keri, the Surashree Kesarbai Kerkar High School now occupies the site of Kerkar's former second home, and the house where she was born still stands, less than one kilometer away. A music festival called the Surashree Kesarbai Kerkar Smriti Sangeet Samaroha is held in Goa each November and a music scholarship in her name is awarded annually to a University of Mumbai student.

Kerkar has the further distinction of having one of her recordings, "Jaat Kahan Ho" (an interpretation of raga Bhairavi) included on the Voyager Golden Record, a gold-plated copper disc containing music selections from around the world, which was sent into space aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts in 1977. The recording was recommended for inclusion on the Voyager disc by the ethnomusicologist Robert E. Brown, who believed it to be the finest recorded example of Indian classical music.