42 artistes selected for Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards

New Delhi, June 19 (IANS) The Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's national academy for music, dance and drama, on Tuesday announced that a total of 42 artistes have been selected for the prestigious award.

"Sangeet Natak Akademi is pleased to announce that the General Council of the Akademi has at its meeting held on 8 June 2018 in Imphal selected 42 artists, including one joint award, for Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (Akademi Purashkar) for the year 2018," it said in a tweet.

Twelve artists have been selected from the field of music, 9 each from the fields of dance and theatre, and ten artists have been included from the traditional, folk, tribal music, dance and puppetry fields, the Akademi said.

The list of awardees includes Marathi theatre actor and writer Abhiram Bhadkamkar, traditional musician from Rajasthan Anwar Khan Manganiyar and among others, the revered classical singer and a representative of the Agra gharana, Lalith J. Rao.

Also included in the award list are Prakash Khandge, Jagannath Bayan, Ramchandra Majhi, Saravjit Kaur, Sudip Gupta, Mukund Naik, among others.

The institution of Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards is now more than fifty years old and the large body of practitioners, gurus and scholars in the performing arts honoured by the Akademi represent the nation's highest achievement in music, dance and drama.