A 76-Year-Old's 3,000 Shows Win a Sangeet Natak Akademi Award

Four artistes from Uttar Pradesh have won a Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, and the one who probably walked the longest road to it is 76 years old. Atamjeet Singh has spent his working life in Nautanki — the loud, all-night folk theatre of the Gangetic plains, performed on temporary stages in small towns. According to Amar Ujala, he has directed 50 full-length plays and 40 shorter ones, written 30 street plays, and performed around 3,000 times.

President Droupadi Murmu presented the honours at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on 13 August. It was an unusually crowded evening. More than 100 artistes were recognised in one sitting, because the Akademi cleared two pending years — 2024 and 2025 — at the same ceremony. ANI reported that 115 artistes received fellowships and awards that night. Four of them came from Uttar Pradesh's performing-arts world.

That figure is worth sitting with for a second. UP is the country's most populous state and the home ground of Kathak, thumri, Nautanki, Ramlila and Braj folk song. Four national awards across a two-year cycle isn't a landslide. It says something about how narrow the funnel is for artistes who work outside films, television and the big-city concert circuit.

What Happened in Delhi on 13 August

The Akademi gives two kinds of recognition. The Fellowship, or Akademi Ratna, is the higher one and is limited to a very small number of living artistes. The Award, or Akademi Puraskar, goes to a much wider group across music, dance, theatre, folk and tribal forms, puppetry and allied arts. The fellows named this round included Ramlal Bareth, Rita Ganguly, Puru Dadheech, A V Anand, Chittaranjan Jyotishi, Pasumarthi Rattaiah Sarma and Sudharani Raghupathy.

Meet the Four Winners From Uttar Pradesh

They work in four completely different registers — a village stage, a concert hall, a classical dance lineage and a camera. What links them is that none of these are quick careers.

Atamjeet Singh, 76, and 3,000 Nautanki Nights

Singh was honoured in the folk category for Nautanki, listed in the 2024 set alongside artistes like Gulabi Sapera for Kalbeliya dance in Rajasthan and Lourembam Bedabati for Manipuri folk music. Nautanki once drew audiences of thousands across UP and Bihar before cinema and then television took that crowd away. Recognition at this level for a form that survives on shrinking village patronage is the real headline here.

Five Decades Before the Ghazal Award Arrived

Ustad Yugantar Sindoor received the 2025 award for ghazal singing. In remarks reported by Amar Ujala, he said close to five decades of practice and discipline finally getting national recognition meant a great deal to him, and he dedicated the honour to his parents and his guru. That timeline is not unusual in Hindustani music, where reputations are built slowly through students and small gatherings.

The Kathak Lineage, and a Photographer

Pandit Ram Mohan Maharaj was recognised for Kathak, from the Kalka-Bindadin family line that gave Lucknow its distinctive style. The same report named Pandit Krishna Mohan Maharaj and Vasavati Mishra among those honoured. Rakesh Sinha took the 2025 award for art photography, a category that quietly acknowledges the people who document performance rather than perform.

This honour belongs to our art and to the legacy our gurus gave us, Ram Mohan Maharaj said, in remarks reported by Amar Ujala.

Why a Sangeet Natak Akademi Award Still Matters

It isn't about the money. The practical value is downstream: awardees get invited to state festivals, university residencies and government-funded programmes, and their students find it easier to get taken seriously. For a folk practitioner, that institutional stamp can be the difference between a tradition continuing through a school and ending with one performer. It also travels — a national citation opens doors abroad that a regional one doesn't.

Two Award Years, One Evening

Clearing 2024 and 2025 together tells its own story. These honours have slipped behind schedule before, and each delay costs something real, because many nominees are in their seventies and eighties. Note the separate track too: the Uttar Pradesh Sangeet Natak Akademi runs its own state Samman, which honours a far larger group of artistes each year. The state award is the wider net; the central one is the narrow gate.

What to Watch for Next

Keep an eye on whether the Akademi returns to an annual cycle rather than bundling two years again — that's the clearest sign of whether the system is working for artistes who don't have time to wait. If you live in Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi or Mathura, the more useful move is closer to home: the winter festival season brings Nautanki troupes and Kathak recitals to auditoriums and temple grounds, usually for a few hundred rupees or free. A form with 3,000 performances behind one man survives on people showing up.