Neil Kulkarni: Tributes paid to 'genius' music critic
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The music journalist and musician passed away on Monday it has been announced
Tributes have been paid to "genius" music critic Neil Kulkarni following his death.
The former Melody Maker writer died suddenly on Monday, confirmed his bandmates from Coventry's Moonbears.
The announcement came with "a sense of shock, devastation, disbelief and the reality that our worlds have in part ended", their statement said.
His journalism had been "barbed, hilarious, brutally honest and emotionally gifted", it added.
BBC presenter and DJ Bobby Friction posted on X, external of the 51-year-old: "You amazing, funny, iconic and ridiculously intelligent lovely man.
"An absolute one of a kind and one of the best to ever put pen to paper.
"You were the very definition of never selling out."
Music journalist and author Simon Price posted , externalhe had been left "devastated".
"A genius writer, one of the finest music critics ever to do it," he said.
"Proud to have been his colleague at Melody Maker, Chart Music and beyond. So many laughs and outrageous times together."
As well as a writer and musician, Kulkarni was course leader of music journalism at the BIMM Music Institute in Birmingham, also lecturing in Coventry, his home city.
Tributes have been paid to the writer, musician and lecturer
Posting on social media a quote by the writer, Drowned In Sound (DiS) podcast and newsletter said: "Having grown up enthralled by his words in Melody Maker, Vox, Kerrang!, The Source, DJ and more, we were giddy when he contributed a few bits to DiS."
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Melody Maker colleague, David Stubbs, posted: "Neil arrived at Melody Maker via the letters page, identifying a shortfall in our editorial content in the 1990s and, eagerly invited to make it up, did so and so much more."
In that letter from 1993, he complained Melody Maker was ignoring black artists, and was complicit in a racism entrenched, he said, in "white music criticism".
He wrote more than 30 years ago: "As a black reader, it's starting to annoy me."
A crowdfunding page set up in his memory said he would be mourned by "friends, loved ones including partner Lenie, sister Meera and his daughters, Georgia and Sofia, on whom he doted".
"Neil was the raconteur, the maker of Bovril, crisp connoisseur, the shouter of the chords and on completion of a new song declarer of 'it's in the bag'…. further to the previous week's 'it's bag adjacent'," the statement from his bandmates said.
"But more than anything Neil was the friend who was there without fail.... well apart from the occasional 'anyone else knackered?' late afternoon message.
"We do and will always miss you, as much as we know you would have known Neil."
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