Mandakini Chaphalkar

Mandakini Chaphalkar (born in 1947) was introduced to music by her mother and she was initially trained in Hindustani music under Rambhau Kulkarni (Nasik). She got introduced to Khayal by Mahadewbuwa Gandhe (Pune), Dhrupad - Dhamar under Balwantrao Kalebuwa (Vardha), again in Khayal by Gajananbuwa Pendharkar (Satara). She got advanced training in Khayal style of Gwalior Gharana (Vishnu Digambar Paluskar branch) under Pandit Mukundrao Gokhale (Pune), a senior disciple of Pandit Vinayakrao Patwardhan. She did 'Sangeet Alankar' course under his guidance. Though she was blind, she had vast corpus of traditional Bandishes in her memory, with a variety of genres such as Raga-Dhyan, Ashtapadi, Lakshan Geet, Dhrupad, Dhamar, Khayal, Tarana, Triwat, Chaturang, Bhajan, Natyageet etc. With this, she had a large repertoire of self-composed Abhang-s, Bhakti Geet, Bhaaw Geet, Sankrit compositions, etc. She was awarded with scholarship from State Government of Maharashtra (1972-74). She was recipient of Gayanacharya Ramkrishnabuwa Vaze award (1968) instituted by LalitaKaladarsha and it was given at the hands of famous music director Vasant Desai. She also got BalGandharva Puraskar at the hands of film music director Madan Mohan (1970) and Pandit Bhimsen Joshi (1971). She performed regularly on Akashvani (AIR) and taught a few students in Pune. She died at the age of 68 in Pune.