Anand Thakore

Anand Thakore (born 17 February 1971) is a poet and Hindustani classical vocalist. Elephant Bathing (Poetrywala, 2012), Mughal Sequence (Poetrywala, 2012) and Waking in December (Harbour Line, 2001) are his three collections of verse. He received training in Hindustani vocal music for many years from Satyasheel Deshpande and Pandit Baban Haldankar of the Agra Gharana. He is the founder of Harbour Line, a publishing collective, and Kshitij, an interactive forum for musicians.

Anand Thakore was born in Mumbai in 1971. His father Sandeep Thakore was a sitar enthusiast and a disciple of the late Ustad Mohammed Khan Beenkaar. As a child he was fascinated by Hindu Mythology and Indian classical music and dance. His Grandmother, Kapila Thakore was an award-winning Gujarati children's writer and translator.

He spent a part of his childhood in the UK and has lived in India since then. He was educated at Solihull School, in the West Midlands, and at Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai. While in the UK, he received instruction in Western choral singing and violin. On returning to Mumbai he studied Hindustani vocal music under Ustad Aslam Khan and Pandit Satyasheel Deshpande, senior disciple of Pandit Kumar Gandharva.

He gave his first public performance at the Vitaan Festival of Music and Dance, 1989, hosted by the Sheriff of Mumbai. He has been giving public concerts and 'mehfils' regularly since. While learning music he simultaneously developed a passion for English literature and various Indian languages: Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit and Braj Bhasha. In addition to writing poetry in English, he began, in his late teens, to compose his own Hindustani compositions with Braj and Hindi lyrics.

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