Annapurna Devi

Annapurna Devi (Bengali pronunciation: [ɔnːopurɳa debi]; 17 April 1927 – 13 October 2018) was an Indian surbahar player of Hindustani classical music and music teacher. She was given the name 'Annapurna' by Maharaja Brijnath Singh of the former Maihar Estate, and it was by this name that she was popularly known. She was the daughter and disciple of Ustad Allauddin Khan, and the sister of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Pandit Ravi Shankar was her first husband, with whom she had a son, Shubhendra Shankar, who was an artist and a sitarist. She was an extremely private person and was never interested in being a professional musician like the rest of her family. However, she was active throughout her life as a teacher to many other prominent musicians like Nikhil Banerjee, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Nityanand Haldipur, Sudhir Phadke and Sandhya Phadke. She was the only known female maestro of the surbahar in the 20th century.