Shanno Khurana Biography 
Shanno Khurana is a noted classical vocalist and composer. She belongs to Rampur-Sahaswan gharana of Hindustani classical music. She sings khayal, tarana, thumri, dadra, tappa, to chaiti and bhajan. She is equally verse in bandish and raag. She was awarded Padma Shri in 1991, followed by the Padma Bhushan in 2006. She has also received Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in the year 2002.
Shanno was born in 1927 in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. She was born in a family of doctors and engineers. But she was attached to music at a younger age. But the conservative family was not willing to send her to music school. Finally her family gave up seeing her passion and she started formal training of music from Pandit Raghunath Rao Musalgaonkar at the age of 12. Later she got opportunity to get training under Ustad Mushtaq Hussain Khan.
Khurana was married at age 18 and shifted to Lahore. She started singing on All India Radio in 1945 in Lahore. After partition of India, her family had to shift to Delhi. With the insistence of her husband, she started her musical practice once again. She practiced with tabla maestro Pandit Chatur Lal for long 16 years. She was active in All India Radio as well. Later she joined Sangeet Natak Akademi as a teacher. Her husband introduced her to Thakur Jaidev Singh this time and she started her touring to foreign countries. She performed in many art and music festivals of India as well.
She joined Indira Kala Sangeet University at Khairagarh during 1970’s and did an extensive study on the folk music traditions of Rajasthan, tappa and folk songs for her PhD. She became a disciple of V. R. Athawale of Gwalior Gharana and S. N. Ratanjankar of Agra gharana, that helped her to learn a few ragas. She continued her training under the son of Mushtaq Hussain, the Ustad Ishtiaq Hussain Khan in 1964. Her organization, Geetika, organizes music festivals for women and promotes tala vadya kutcheri. She has composed, directed and sung five full-length musicals till now.
Published: N/A
Updated: September 30, 2013
