We are likely to think about from our up to date perspective celebrities of the previous — and it’s apparent there may be extra to fact than we think about.
The identical is true of a character like M S Subbulakshmi, who was born in 1916 in an Isai Vellalar household in Madurai. Isai Vellalars had been the hereditary practitioners of classical music and dance in Tamil Nadu for a number of centuries till stigmatisation of the group resulted within the widespread circulation of derogatory phrases resembling Devadasis to confer with the womenfolk of the group. The denigration of the Devaradiyar (sacred servants) system resulted within the enslavement of ladies and their subjugation on sexual grounds. Curiously, the menfolk of the Isai Vellalar group didn’t undergo any social ostracisation.
Sadly, even at this time, references to doyens from the Isai Vellalar group resembling M S Subbulakshmi and Balasaraswati carry up their Devadasi household lineage.
A vigorous marketing campaign and an Act
Because of a vigorous marketing campaign by one of many members of the legislative council of Madras, Muthulakshmi Reddy, together with the help of Periyar and different Dravidian motion leaders and members of the Isai Vellalar group resembling Muvalur Ramamirtham Ammal, the system was abolished with the promulgation of the Madras Devadasi (Prevention of Dedication) Act, 1947.
Isai Vellalars misplaced their hereditary sources of livelihood on account of two main elements: moreover the promulgation of the Madras Devadasi (Prevention of Dedication) Act, the appropriation of their hereditary arts by the Brahmins via the institutional help of the Music Academy and sabhas. The struggles and triumphs of Balasaraswati, the final exponent of Sadirattam (the dance of the Devadasis) through the Nineteen Forties-Nineteen Eighties are properly documented by her son-in-law and a former professor of musicology within the US, Douglas Knight. Bharatanatyam emerged through the first a part of final century as a result of makes an attempt of Rukmani Arundale and the workplace bearers of Music Academy resembling E Krishna Iyer to make the dance of Devadasis (sadir attam) “respectable”.
It’s with this historic background in thoughts that we have to think about/write/learn/replicate on somebody like M S Subbulakshmi. Her public picture in 2024 hovers round up to date controversies such because the award named after her by Music Academy and the awardee, T M Krishna, who could not obtain it due to the Madras Excessive Courtroom judgment which cites the desire of M S Subbulakshmi.
The well-known historic details of a character like her are simple: She was born in Madurai on September 16, 1916, to a well known Isai Vellalar veena participant, Shanmugavadivu, and died in Chennai on December 11, 2004. She married T Sadasivam, a public relations one who was carefully related to the Kalki Krishnamurthy household that printed the Kalki journal She recorded her first album on the age of 10 and gave a public efficiency on the Music Academy of her bhajan on the age of 13. She was an actor too and labored in 5 movies, together with the well-known Meera (1945). She made her movie debut with Sevasadan in 1938.
M S, the insurgent
However there are different little-known historic details of her character that convey a distinct picture of her. She was a insurgent through the Nineteen Forties, when she took cudgels towards the prevailing apply of singing in Carnatic music live shows in Telugu, Kannada and Sanskrit; she as a substitute sang in Tamil.
M S Subbulakshmi was an articulate member of the Tamil Isai Motion. Launched by the founding father of Annamalai College, Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar in 1941, the motion sought to present Tamil a distinguished house in Carnatic music live shows. Her passionate involvement with the motion was what invited the notorious five-year ban on her by the Music Academy.
Her sonorous voice was her hallmark. It had a pitch that was unmatched by her contemporaries resembling D Ok Pattammal and M L Vasantakumari, with whom she shared an admirable skilled rapport.
M S Subbulakshmi captured the creativeness of the brand new nation within the making when Meera, directed by the American Ellis R Dungan, was launched in 1945.
Images of her with Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, moreover footage of M Karunanidhi and C N Annadurai listening to her live shows carry alive a character who had a magical aura to bind leaders, followers and, consequently, a nation that was searching for an “splendid” lady icon. This launched her on the worldwide circuit and the nationwide circuit of live shows. Tamil girls began shopping for her favorite blue vaira oosi Kanchipuram sarees and began draping their jasmine flowers as she did. MS Blue turned a brand new color to think about one’s saree in Tamil Nadu. Nevertheless, through the later a long time, as she turned the face of Carnatic music, she moved away from Tamil Isai, singing largely Telugu and Sanskrit compositions and bhajans.
Her camaraderie with Balasaraswati is properly captured in a well-liked picture of each of them smoking cigarettes (was it a prank?).
She comes out as an unbiased decision-maker at instances. One in every of these situations was when she went again on her personal resolution to not sing at any public programme and accepted the invitation of a prime official of the Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanam to sing the verses of Annamacharya, a fifteenth century Telugu composer. Her album, Balaji Pancharatnamala, which was launched in 1979, ended up altering her musical journey eternally.
From a sabha live performance singer, she remodeled into an ace singer of bhajans. Her voice and music crossed the brink of the sabhas and wafted via public areas and home areas. Her renditions of Suprabatham, which is sung to get up Lord Venkateswara through the early morning hours on the Tirupati Tirumala temple, made her voice a morning ritual each Saturday within the properties of the Vaishnavite households of south India.
Private letters and a fortress
She is just not identified for her interviews within the press and I’ve not come throughout any main interview by her on very important subjects of her life and music. There’s a point out of her private letters (numbering 20) by journalist-author T J S George within the appendix of his ebook on M S Subbulakshmi (2016). They had been addressed to G N Balasubramaniam, a number one Carnatic musician and her counterpart within the movie, Sakuntalai (1940), with whom she was evidently in love. However it was Sadasivam who ended up marrying her. It was a wedding that helped her scale nice skilled heights, however made her a closely guarded topic. In line with T J S George, “the absence of any type of information about M S Subbulakshmi’s life and the fortress erected round her by her husband, Tyagaraja Sadasivam,” made the analysis on her “nearly unimaginable”. He additional stated: “Sadasivam managed all entry and all info so tightly that nothing was ever identified that Sadasivam didn’t need identified.”
Her musical live shows got here to an finish with the demise of her husband in 1997. She handed away after a quick hospitalisation in 2004.
It could be an injustice to think about her solely as a well-known Carnatic singer from Tamil Nadu. She, like many celebrities of her type, defies categorisation and bracketing. She had the best to decide on her companion, her lifestyle and her means of singing and that have to be revered. Making an attempt to think about her from some other perspective, significantly the ideological affiliations of latest topics, is more likely to distort her private historical past and the spirit of a girl artist who rose from very humble beginnings. In contrast to Rukmani Arundale or a lot of her contemporaries or present-day artists, she was not from privileged backgrounds. Her sacrifices and struggles additionally require a spot in our creativeness.
The author is Professor, Division of Media and Communication, Central College of Tamil Nadu, Thiruvarur
