Of the various genres of North Indian classical music, that known as dhrupad is generally regarded, by musicians, listeners and scholars, as the ‘oldest’ ‘purest’, ‘serious’ most ‘demanding’, ‘highest’, most ‘sacred’, and above all perhaps, most ‘traditional’. It is also generally assumed to be extinct, or at best moribund. Indeed, faced with the burgeoning popularity of other styles of classical or semi-classical vocal music-khyal, thumri, ghazal-and of instrumental music, to say nothing of film music, dhrupad retreated into semi-obscurity during the middle decades of this century. During this period, for example, commercial recordings of dhrupad could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Nevertheless, during the las twenty years, dhrupad has reemerged from the shadows…

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