Gopal Babu Goswami

Gopal Babu Goswami was the golden voice of Kumaoni song. His plaintive melodies of separation and soldier's leave, above all Kaile Baji Muruli and Ghughuti Na Basa in its Kumaoni life, still stop conversation in the hills a generation after his death.

He was born in 1941 at Chandikhet near Chaukhutia in Almora district, in poverty, and sang his way from village fairs to All India Radio. His voice, high, clear and aching, matched a songbook about the hill experience: the woman watching the road for a husband in the army, the flute on the ridge, the crow bearing news.

Through the 1970s and 80s his records and cassettes made him Kumaon's first mass-media star, and songs like Kaile Baji Muruli became part of the region's emotional furniture. He composed and wrote much of his material himself, rooted in folk melody but unmistakably his own.

He died in 1996, only fifty-five, and the mourning in Kumaon was of a kind reserved for family. His songs remain the standard against which every Kumaoni singer is measured.