Veteran Carnatic musician V Dakshinamoorthy (94) breathed his last at his residence in Mylapore here on Friday. His demise brings to an end a stellar career that spanned over six decades when he set tune to movies in Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi. Dakshinamoorthy is survived by wife, two sons and a daughter.
Family sources said his body would be kept for public darshan on Saturday from 9.30 am to 2 pm; the last rites will take place at a crematorium in Triplicane.
Born on December 22, 1919, at Alappuzha in Kerala, Dakshinamoorthy exhibited a taste for Carnatic music from a very young age. His mother Parvathi Ammal, herself a well-accomplished singer, laid the foundation stone of a career that was to span over six decades and several languages by introducing a young Dakshinamoorthy to the world of Carnatic music.
Under the tutelage of Parvathi Ammal, Dakshinamoorthy learnt the intricacies of Carnatic music, including the ragas and keerthanas. He then went on to learn music from the late Venkatachala Potty, and debuted as a composer around the same time.
Dakshinamoorthy’s debuted as music composer in the 1950 watershed Malayalam movie Nalla Thanka (Nalla Thankal in Tamil) and went on to compose tunes for Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi movies.
Dakshinamoorthy during the course of his career composed music for over 125 movies and has to his credit a whopping 859 songs. Music composed by him had a distinct quality that reverberated of classical raga-based tunes, which indeed was his forte.
Dakshinamoorthy was well known for scoring music for the songs written by Sreekumaran Thampi. He is credited with introducing noted playback singer P Susheela to Malayalam filmdom in the (1960) film Seetha. A slew of honours came his way. He was the recipient of Kerala State Film Award for Best Music Director (1971) and Kerala State Film Award for Lifetime Achievement (1998).