My mother Mandakini Gadre was a born musician. She gave performances over All India
Radio, Bombay (Mumbai) for nearly 30 years during 1942 and 1972. She could not learn
music before marriage due to prevailing social environment and family restrictions.
It was only after marriage in 1937, that she could seriously pursue music. Attaining
proficiency in Music would not have been possible without total support of my father
Vishwanath Moreshwar alias Visubhau Gadre, although he had no ear for music. It
was possible for my mother to exploit her musical talents commercially, however,
she refrained from doing so and gave priority to upbringing of two sons and to carrying
out family responsibilities.
In line with my mother’s wish, I did learn music for 2 years in school days.
Later I completed “Sangeeta Prabhakar” (B. Mus.) during first 3 years
of my service. However I learnt nuances of music by listening to her Riyaaz,
discussions with her and listening to maestros and reading books on music.
Background of this web site
During my service, I could hardly devote any time for learning music seriously.
I, therefore, started collection of music nearly 40 years ago. Soon I realized that
I landed up with same Ragas performed by different musicians. The number of Ragas
was limited to about 110 ragas. Around the same time I found a book - Volume I of
“Raga Nidhi (Encyclopaedia of Ragas)” written by Shri. B Subbarao giving brief description
of Hindustani and Carnatic Ragas beginning with alphabets A, B and C. I could get
other three volumes later. The four volumes gave brief information of about 500
Hindustani and 500 Carnatic Ragas. The handbook gave a totally new direction to
my collection and I concentrated on collection of audio samples of the obscure Ragas
After successfully launching the web site
swaramandakini.com which is devoted to BhendiBazaar Gharana of Hindustani
Classical Music in May 2009, the idea, of compilation of a Database of Ragas, sharing
the information and audio files of common and lesser known Ragas from my archive,
struck me and this web site is the result of such effort which would not have been
possible without support of the members of my family and guidance from and help
of a large Number of friends and musicians.
Updated 13th May, 2021.