Gayathri Rajapur Kassebaum is a disciple of gottuvadyam exponent Sangita Kalanidhi Sri Budalur Krishna Murthy Sastrigal. Her Guru is one of the pioneers in setting a gottuvadyam style. she is a grand performer of (Gottuvadyam and vocal). She earned Sangita Vidwan from Karnatic Music College Madras in the mid-1950s (voice and gottuvadyam) where Tiruppambarm Swaminatha Pillai and Srimati Brindamma, Mayavaram Krishna Iyer were teaching in the college. She was a student of late Sangita Kalanidhi Musiri Subramanya Iyer. She earned PhD from the University of Washington. She also has an M.A. in ethnomusicology from the University of Hawaii. She also has B.A. from Karnatic University Dharwar while she taught Karnatic music at the music department. She has done extensive field research on the folk music of Karnataka and has performed classical music in India, the United States and in Europe. She served as the lecturer in Karnatic music at the University of Hawaii and the University of Washington. She has given lecture cum demonstrations related to Karnatic music at the Music Academy of Madras, at annual meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology and other professional conferences in China, Korea and Cambodia. In 2014 she set to tunes a collection of chants titled Sung Chants of Tiruvannamalai. (album available on Youtube). She has now returned to India and lives in Bangalore. She has resumed performances (both vocal and gottuvadyam).