CHENNAI: At the crack of dawn, MS Subbulakshmi’s Vishnu Sahsranamam woke up the gods and his devotees in our neighbourhood. Despite listening to this divine voice every day, it was her recording of Nama Ramayana, a Sanskrit retelling for children of the ancient story, that made me fall in love with her voice. Soon, Carnatic music became synonymous with MS. This is a sentiment shared by many music lovers and it also comes across in Keshav Desiraju’s Of Gifted Voice: The Life and Art of MS Subbulakshmi.
A research-intensive biography, Of Gifted Voice takes readers through the mellifluous years of Subbulakshmi on stage, in front of the camera, her camaraderie with famous politicians and musicians with information about her contemporaries, making it a wholesome package. The chapters also serve as a guide on concert lists, songs and their ragams, and presentation style of the singer and her peers.
Growing up in the 1960s in a south Indian household in Mumbai, Desiraju was exposed to music at a young age. “There was always music in the house — my father would take me to concerts, there was music on the radio, there were people at home who would sing. Briefly, even I learned music and it remained a very important part of my life,” says Desiraju of his Carnatic music connect.
Unlike the millennials, who grew up in MS’ retired years and were deprived of her stage presence, having no understanding of how her songs could captivate the audience, Desiraju first watched MS perform live in 1967 as a 12 year old in Shanmukhananda hall in Bombay. And it was, perhaps, immediately after that he understood the magnitude of this singer.
A tribute in tales
Subbulakshmi was enormously important for the tradition she represented, he says. The 1940s, 50s and 60s were the great concert years; she was singing everywhere she was doing sabha kutcheris, wedding recitals, benefit concerts. But, she was not alone. And the book explains that in great detail, walking the readers through the different years of MS’ sabha sojourn. “I think the book tries to also talk about mainly her women contemporaries but, also, distinguished male performers. She was a dominant presence. You could not be interested in Carnatic music without coming up against MS, listening to her and having a view about her,” he says.
And this is precisely what motivated Desiraju to pen a biography despite many works on her life already finding a place on the bookstands. “Of course, a great deal has been written about her. She was many things in her life — she was a philanthropist, a benefactor of many causes, a VIP, she had been a film star, she was seen as a great bhakta, an embodiment of south Indian style and these books capture that extremely well. But, nowhere did I think has she been presented as a classical musician of the first rank, which is the way I’d like to define her. I felt that this aspect of her life needed to be both studied and brought out. That’s really why I chose to write on this,” he shares.
In this quest, Desiraju spent months researching about her. As the book begins, he states that there are not many primary sources (written material). He watched hours of MS’ concerts and read up on the regular coverage of them in popular newspapers and magazines of that time. “There was a fair amount of learning to be done by listening to concerts, trying to put together a sense of how her musical career was progressing based on her concert list. I found it a very enjoyable process,” he says, adding that he completed writing the book in 12 months.
A star on stage
When you are on a stage, how you present yourself is important and that was something MS understood very well, he points out. Dressed in a pattu podavai with the pallu pulled over her shoulders, hair pulled back in a neat bun, the shine of her diamond mookuththis drawing all the attention – MS’ concert was a visual spectacle. But, there was something beyond her beauty that etched a memory in rasikas’ mind. “Subbulakshmi was always in control. She had a magnificent presence. People who knew her say she was a mild and modest woman but, on stage, she was radiant.
She always used to have a large group of accompanists. There was the violin, mridangam, ghatam, kanjira, and Radha (her step-daughter) singing with her, somebody on tambura and, occasionally, a morsing also. She knew what she was doing and understood the art of communication. She communicated through her voice, the way she addressed her audience or she would finish her alapana and would smile at the violinist to say to him that ‘it is your turn’. It was all a part of a piece. That was MS, that was just the way she was,” he recalls.
With the turn of every page, the readers also get to traverse the path taken by DK Pattammal, ML Vasanthakumari, Brinda and Mukta, dancer Balasaraswathi, and many of her other contemporaries.” I wanted to place Subbulakshmi in the many contexts — in the context of the world of Carnatic music and how that was developing as it was a time when women began singing in public, dismantling courtesan traditions. I thought it was necessary for a book on Subbulakshmi to talk about Pattammal, Brinda, Vasanathakumari and women we don’t know like Vasanthakokilam, Rajam Pushpavanam who could have become something if as I have mentioned in the book “the fate had been less wilful”.
And then, there was the context of the world. It is wrong to think that Subbulalshmi in any manner is unique; she was unique in one way but she was not unique in the sense that there were very many great women musicians in their own spaces and she was part of that also, she was part of world of Carnatic music, she was part of independent India, she was part of a community of musicians in India and she was part of a world community of musicians. That appealed to me as a presentational style,” he explains.
Uncannily, there were five “world divas” Ella Fitzgerald, Umm Kulthum, Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland and Edith Piaf who had a similar journey to that of Subbulakshmi. And this is one context that Desiraju had decided to explore. “These are all musicians we have heard. An older cousin introduced me to Ella Fitzgerald when I was very young; I was in college when I heard Edith Piaf on record, and Umm Kulthum I heard about her in the context of Subbulakshmi when she was in Cairo and she met her. There are these women who are actually her contemporaries; none of them knew of the other but they were all doing very similar things in their spaces. When I read more about them, they all came from nowhere; that struck me the most. They had nothing, but their ability. And how they used those talents to become what they did. And I thought this actually a very strong evocation,” he points out.
While the book is named Of Gifted Voice, the irony is not lost on us when from the chapter titled Sadadsivam, we note that her husband ran the show while MS was the star. But, a star who did not have her own voice when it came to presentation and taking up or declining concert offers. “But, I like to think of her as one with a gifted voice,” Desiraju says. “In the first chapter, I say “it is the stuff of tragedy” and I think this is part of the tragedy.
That one will never know what she would have been capable of as a classical musician if she had been allowed a little more freedom in what she has presented and when she presented it. ML Vasanthakumari would go to a concert without having the first idea of what she was going to do. Hers was a complete opposite of the way MS made her presentation. Completely unrehearsed because it was just her imagination, and that’s what made her the greatest creative the world of Carnatic music has ever seen. We don’t know what we’d have seen if Subbulakshmi’s imagination had been allowed also to take over,” he signs off.
The need for yet another biography
“You could not be interested in Carnatic music without coming up against MS, listening to her and having a view about her,” he says. And this is precisely what motivated Desiraju to pen a biography despite many works on her life already finding a place on the bookstands.
Book: Of Gifted Voice: The Life and Art of MS Subbulakshmi
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Pages: 500
Price: Rs 699