KS Chithra’s voice, clear as crystal, has seamlessly bent, twisted and moulded itself into songs in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi, Telugu and almost all major Indian languages (with a few foreign ones thrown in). To Kannada speakers who will be familiar with her playback music hits like Kelisade Kallu Kallinali from Belli Kalungura (1992), Tunturu from Amruthavarshini (1997), or Nadeem Nadeem Thana from Gaalipata (2008), it may be surprising that she does not speak the language. Ahead of her concert on Saturday, she admits that the key to capturing the emotional essence of songs in languages she doesn’t speak is in understanding it completely. “I ask them [composers/directors] the situation of the song, the meaning of certain words, which I do not know; they tell me the situation and how they are going to shoot. So I try to adapt whatever I can from that,” she confesses.
Over a prolific career spanning 46 years, ‘The Nightingale of South India’ has been working extensively with iconic musicians like AR Rahman, Ilaiyaraja, MM Keeravani and particularly in the Kannada music industry, with SP Balasubrahmanyam and Hamsalekha. Reflecting on her collaborations with Hamsalekha, Chithra is all praise. “He is a person who has a personal stamp. Whenever we listen to a song of his, we can make out that it is something he has composed. Just like Salil Chowdhury, Hamsalekha also has a peculiar style. Working with all of them has given me a lot…I’ve learnt so many things from these legends,” she says.
With Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri, six national awards and more under her belt, Chithra holds concerts that continue to draw crowds, and boasts a monthly listener count of almost 1.3 crore on Spotify. Chithra notes she hasn’t experienced many professional low points but quietly confesses, “Sometimes, you feel little sad, maybe when some of your songs are replaced without any reason or without informing, but I don’t take it to my heart. I don’t have an interest in many other things other than music… maybe I’m still alive because of music.” It was her music that she credits with sailing her through one of the most devastating periods of her life in 2011, when a drowning accident took the life of her eight-year-old daughter. “When I lost my daughter, that was the greatest blow I got in my life. Music brought me up from that…it is my driving force,” she says.
Having achieved so much, the 61-year-old classically-trained singer has one ambition that has been unexplored: to perform a Carnatic concert. “I’ve learnt Carnatic music, but was not fully into Carnatic concerts because I had a feeling that whatever I had learnt was not enough to do a concert. I still wanted to do more, but unfortunately, I was so busy in the film industry; and I didn’t get time to learn with my guru. That is still pending and I may do it,” she says.
There was a time when Chithra used to visit Bengaluru every month to record multiple tracks in a go. Despite her schedule slowing down and most recording work moving online or closer to home, the city is still close to Chithra’s heart.
(KS Chithra will be live at Phoenix Marketcity, Whitefield, today from 7pm onwards. Tickets available on bookmyshow.com)