Swami Nadabrahmananda

Sri Basavaraj Puranik was born on May 5, 1896, in Mysore State, South India. He began his formal musical training at the age of 20, and continued seventeen years of arduous discipline and austerity under three illustrious masters: Sri Sadashiva Bua of Nargund (Karnataka), Ustad Alladia Khan of Kolhapur, and Tata Bua of Benares. He became professor of music at Benares Hindu University, and was appointed court musician for the Maharaja of Mysore. His fame spread throughout India and he received numerous commercial offers, but in accordance with a vow made to his Guru, he steadfastly refused to compromise the spiritual purity of his music.

Sri Puranik came and joined the Ashram on the 13th of December, 1952 and he was initiated into the order of Sannyasa by Sri Gurudev in 1953, with the monastic name of Swami Nadabrahmananda. He was the principal of the Music Centre in our Ashram which virtually was raised to the status of a Music College under the patronage of Sri Gurudev and Nadabrahmananda. A beautiful singer, master of the art of Music due to which proficiency of his people used to call him modern 'Tabala'. Such was his confident touch in the Ragas of Music as well as handling of Tabala! His expertness in the various technicalities of musical performance earned him great name in different parts of the country and from many devotees who came to the Ashram, hundreds and thousands in number. He lived for sometime in Dehradun among the devotees of the Society and became responsible for starting a little Branch of the Divine Life Society at that time in Krishnanagar (Dehradun), after which again he came back to the Ashram and settled down. He lived in this Ashram for years and years like this, teaching Music and conducting Music Concerts under the auspices of Sri Gurudev.

Years after the passing of the great Master, he went to the West, firstly to the United States and thin to several other states and Europe also. His ability to present himself as a master musician was really superb and people got thrilled and thousands of devotees and eager students were trained by him, who all remembers him with great reverence and devotion, love and affection even today. His departure from the United States due to age and fatigue and his coming back to the Ashram on that account brought a sense of bereavement, as it were, among the students in Guru and almost a God-man in the field of Music. He is now in the Headquarters Ashram living alone to himself and confining himself to his own Kutir.