“For Good Services Rendered”. The commendation emblazoned across the gold medal is remarkably understated. For, when the Gramophone Company of India handed it to vocalist Narayanrao Vyas in 1935, he was more than just “good” – he was a prodigious recording superstar. He had broken every sales record for 78 RPM discs for Hindustani music. And in the decades that followed, he would go on to cut an impressive total of nearly 150 shellacs.

The medal, now dulled with age but a prized heirloom, sits in the Mumbai home of his son, vocalist Vidyadhar Vyas – a testament to the life and legacy of a rare classical vocalist with an easy and smart grasp of emerging audio technologies. Not only did Vyas take to the phonograph with ease, but he, along with Balgandharva and Sundara Bai, also played a pio

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