Hindustani vocalist and Agra Gharana exponent Indudhar Nirody dies at 91

Pandit Indudhar Nirody, a senior vocalist of the Agra Gharana and a widely respected guru of Hindustani classical music, died in Panvel, Maharashtra, after a brief illness. He was 91.

Nirody trained under several leading figures of the tradition, among them Pandit K. G. Ginde, Pandit S. C. R. Bhatt, Pandit Chidanand Nagarkar and Pandit Dinkar Kaikini.

He was conferred the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2014, and the following year received an honorary doctorate from Dr. Gangubai Hangal Music and Performing Arts University.

Around 2002, Nirody shifted to Mysuru, where he lived in Kuvempunagar and Saraswathipuram. It was during this period, in his eighties, that he undertook and completed the task of rendering and recording all 1,896 compositions collected in Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande's Kramik Pustak Malika — a body of work that stands as a lasting record of the Hindustani repertoire.

His death marks the loss of a musician whose career joined deep grounding in the Agra Gharana to an enduring commitment to preserving and transmitting the classical tradition.