Anand Thakore

​

Born in Mumbai in 1971, Poet and Hindustani classical vocalist Anand Thakore spent a part of his childhood in Britain and has lived in India since then. Waking in December (2001), Mughal Sequence (2012) and Elephant Bathing (2012) are his three collections of verse. His poems, as well as his critical essays on poetry and music have appeared in leading national and international journals and anthologies. He is the founder of Harbour Line, a Mumbai-based publishing collective, and of Kshitij, a group devoted to the creation of interactive performance spaces for musicians. Thakore describes his work as poet and musician, as having arisen ‘ from a fortuitous confluence of cultural histories’. He gives concerts regularly at ‘mehfil-s’ and music festivals in various parts of the country and lives in Mumbai, where he teaches Hindustani music in the guru-shishya tradition.

His musical training began in early childhood under the guidance of Ustad Aslam Khan and of his father Sandip Thakore, a sitar-enthusiast and a disciple of Ustad Mohammed Khan ‘ Beenkaar’. Anand Thakore trained for many years with Pandit Satyasheel Desphande, foremost disciple of Pandit Kumar gandharva; and with Pandit Baban Haldankar of the Agra Gharana. During his years as a student of Pandit Satyasheel Deshpande, he played an active role in musicological research and documentation projects at the Samvaad Foundation run by his guru in Mumbai. A composer of music with lyrics in Hindi, he has a number of Khayal compositions to his credit and composes under the pseudonym Sabadpiya. Guldasta-e-Khayal, his latest Hindustani Classical CD appeared in 2011; Sabadpiya Ki Khoj, a pamphlet of khayal lyrics composed by him, in 2009.

Thakore is the recipient of a national scholarship for music from the Ministry of Human Resource Development, a grant from the Charles Wallace India Trust for experimental work in the UK and The Svar-mani award for excellence in musical performance. He earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Mumbai - where he also studied Sanskrit Literature -and holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Pune. He was recently on the editorial board for the Montreal Prize Global Anthology (2012) and is currently working - between teaching music and concerts - on his fourth book of verse.