Gundecha Brothers
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Umakant and Ramakant Gundecha, known as the Gundecha Brothers, are leading Dagarvani dhrupad singers, taught by Zia Fariduddin Dagar and Zia Mohiuddin Dagar. Umakant and Ramakant always sing together; a third brother, Akhilesh, is a pakhawaj drummer, taught by Shrikant Mishra and Raja Chhatrapati Singh of Bijna.
Born into a Jain family in Ujjain, the brothers studied at the local Madhav Music College (Umakant has a post-graduate degree in music and economics, Ramakant in music and commerce) before moving to Bhopal in 1981 for training under dhrupad master Zia Fariduddin Dagar and his brother Mohiuddin. These gurus were second cousins of the two major forces in the second half of the 20th Century, two duos known as the senior Dagar Brothers (Nasir Moinuddin & Nasir Aminuddin) and the junior Dagar Brothers (Nasir Zahiruddin & Nasir Faiyazuddin); the Gundecha Brothers have come to be regarded as a third force on par with the senior and junior Dagars. After training for four years, they performed in public for the first time in May 1985, at the Uttaradhikar dance and music festival in Bhopal.
Umakant and Ramakant have good voices with strong lower registers, and sing with a less aggressive style than the Dagar singers – perhaps inherited from Zia Mohiuddin, Rudra veena player, who championed very slow music. They have worked to expand the dhrupad repertoire by incorporating texts by Hindi poets such as Tulsidas, Padmakar and Nirala, and they have set up a dhrupad school outside Bhopal where they teach students from all over the world. They are probably the most recorded dhrupad singers.
Akhilesh Gundecha has a Master's degree in music from Khairagarh University, and is as of 2006 working on his PhD.
The Gundecha brothers run a school for teaching music in the Dhrupad tradition . This school is run according to the "guru-shishya" style of teaching that was prevalent in India for teaching of the arts ( other more notable examples include Nrityagram near Bangalore, Karnataka set up by the late dancer Protima Gauri Bedi). The students are apprentices and it is not uncommon for them to shoulder responsibilities in the Gundecha household including cooking and cleaning for everyone on their campus.
