Rasbihari Desai Biography 
Rasbihari Desai was a veteran Gujarati Sugam Sangeet artist. Known as a singer and composer who contributed immensely to Gujarati music, he taught at music academy in Bhavans College in Ahmedabad. Under his guidance, thousands of students have been trained and excelled in music. He was married to Gujarati singer Vibha Vaishnav in 1964, who worked as Joint Commissioner in Income Tax department. To popularize Gujarat sugam music among common man, he started ‘Shruti Vrund’ in 1961 which successfully organized many Sugam sangeet concerts across Gujarat for more than four decades.
Desai was also associated with Gujarat film music for many years and received State Award for Best Director for the film - ‘Kashi no dikro’. ‘Mandvani Jui’ is one of his popular film music albums and he has also composed music for the popular Gujarati private albums - ‘Shravanmadhuri’, ‘Bilipatra’ etc. he is also associated with devotional albums and bhajans. Rasbihari Desai's Bhajan 'Madi Taru Kanku Kharyu Ne' is extremely popular among Gujaratis. He was a physics professor by profession, whose main passion was music.
He was born into a musical Nagar family in Gujarat. His grandmother Mahalakshmiben and his father Ramanlal Desai were good singers, from whom Desai learnt the first lessons of music. His father was known as Meghani of Patan. He later learnt Gujarati sugam music from Suryakant Dave, Suresh Jani and Purushottam Upadhyay. Desai is one of the leading names who revived Gujarati sugam music through regular concerts and Shruti Vrund’ he started in 1961. He contributed several fresh voices through his music academy. Rasbihari Desai was given public honor by the city of Amdavad in July 2012, a couple of months before he passed away on 6 October 2012 at Ahmedabad. He passed away at Jivraj Mehta hospital following a cardiac arrest.
Published: N/A
Updated: March 06, 2016
