(b Benares [now Varanasi], 1929). North Indian vocalist. Her father, Ramdas Rai, was a well-known harmonium player and music teacher. When she was five he took her to Pandit Sarju Prasad Misra, a sārangī player and vocalist, for lessons. She studied with him for seven or eight years; he taught her the genres tappā and khayāl, among others. At the age of nine, she acted as the child heroine in a film, Yaad rahe (‘May it be Remembered’) about caste conflict. She later studied with Pandit Sri Chand Misra, who taught her prabandha, chanda, dhrupad and khayāl. When, about 1946, she married, she agreed not to perform in private soirées outside her home, but public concerts, radio programmes and soirées in her home were acceptable. She first recorded for All-India Radio, Allahabad, in 1949, and first appeared in a public concert at the Arrah conference, Bihar, in 1951. Soon after this, she took formal initiation (gandha bandh) as Sri Chand Misra's disciple, studying with him until his death in the early 1960s.
She is regarded as a specialist in the contemporary Benares style of vocal music. In her semi-classical repertory, notably the genres thumrī, dādrā, kajrī, caitī and holī, she blends her rigorous classical background with the distinct regional flavour of the traditional seasonal songs of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
She has toured widely and has received numerous awards, notably the Sangeet Natak Award, the Hafiz Ali Khan Award, the Padma Shri and, in 1989, the Padma Bhushan. She served on the faculty of the Sangeet Research Academy in Calcutta during the 1980s and on that of Banaras Hindu University in the early 1990s. During the 1990s she maintained a busy concert schedule and dedicated herself to transmitting her musical legacy to students from various backgrounds. A documentary film about her life was commissioned by the Government of India Films Division entitled Girija Devi: Glimpses of Her Life and Music (1997).
and other resources
Girija Devi Sings the Glory to purabi gayaki, Magnasound C4HV0065 (1989)
Girija Devi, Zakir Hussain, rec. Sept 1989, Moment MR 1004 (1991)
A.D. Sharma: Musicians of India: Past and Present (Calcutta, 1993)
M. Kinnear: The Gramophone Company's First Indian Recordings (Bombay, 1994)
Inde du nord: Girija Devi en concert, rec. Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, 24 Feb 1992, Ocora C 560056 (1995) [incl. notes and transcrs. in Eng., Fr., Ger.]
AMELIA DUTTA