Mogubai Kurdikar has been played on NTS in shows including Raga Vibrations, featured first on 17 January 2026. Songs played include Raga Alhaiya Bilawal.

Mogubai Kurdikar (Marathi: मोगुबाई कुर्डीकर) (July 15 1904 – February 10 2001) was a renowned North Indian classical vocalist of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana (school).

Mogu Kurdikar was born in a "kalāwant" (entertainers) community in the village of Kurdi in the then Portuguese Goa. When she was ten years old, her mother, Jayashreebāi, took her to the temple at Zambavli, and arranged for a wandering holyman to teach music to Mogu for a while. Later she took Mogu to a traveling theater company, the Chandreshwar Bhootnāth Sangeet Mandali, and the company took Mogu in as an actress.

While Mogu was with Chandreshwar Bhootnath Mandali, her mother died. A legend says that on her deathbed the mother told Mogu that her soul would not rest in peace until Mogu became a famous singer. The theater company soon went bankrupt, and the rival Sātārkar Stree Sangeet Mandali hired Mogu. She played commendably the parts such as of Kinkini in the play, Punyaprabhāv, and of the heroine Subhadrā in the play with the same name, Subhadrā. A conflict arose, however, between Mogu and one of the senior women in the theater company, who then expelled Mogu from the company. Mogu moved to Sāngli, and took some music lessons from Ināyat Khān of the Rāmpur-Sahaswan gharānā. For some reason, however, he too soon decided to terminate giving her further lessons.

At this time, vocalist legend Gaansamrat Alladiya Khan Saheb was in Sangli for medical treatment, and on his way to and from his doctor's, he walked by Mogu's residence, where he would hear her practice what she had learnt from Inayat Khan. One day he stopped, introduced himself and offered to teach her. This relationship continued intermittently.

They performed the gandha-bandan, and he kept teaching her to the end of his life. She became one of the topmost singers in North India, even hailed as "the queen" by Alladiya in public. She received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1968 and the Sangeet Research Academy Award in 1980, and was decorated with the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour for service to the nation, in 1974.

Mogubai trained students such as Padma Talwalkar, Kamal Tambe, Wamanrao Deshpande, Suhasini Mulgaonkar, Babanrao Haldankar, Arun Dravid, and her own daughter, Kishori Amonkar. (Indian government has honored Kishori with Padma Vibhushan award for her musical talent.) Some of Mogubai's recordings have been reissued as a volume of RPG Music's Vintage 78 RPM Recordings on CD series (CDNF150596).