Nehru called himself a mere prime minister before M. S. Subbulakshmi, a queen of music
At eleven she sang in a temple hall in Tiruchirappalli; in 1966 she was the first Indian ever to take the stage before the UN General Assembly. M. S. Subbulakshmi went on to be the first musician given the Bharat Ratna, India's top civilian honour, and gave away much of what she earned.
Born in Madurai on 16 September 1916, she grew up among musicians. Her mother, Shanmukhavadivu Ammal, a veena player from the devadasi community, performed regularly, and her grandmother played violin. She trained in Carnatic singing under Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer and later in Hindustani music with Pandit Narayanrao Vyas. Her first public concert came in 1927 in the 100-pillar hall of the Rockfort Temple, and two years later, aged 13, she was invited to sing bhajans at the selective Madras Music Academy, a rare honour for so young a girl.
Film briefly beckoned. She made four Tamil films, starting with Sevasadanam in 1938, a reformist story about girls married to old men that critics saw as a jolt to Brahmin orthodoxy. She played the male sage Narada in Savitri in 1941 to raise money for Kalki, the nationalist weekly launched by her husband Sadasivam, and her title role as the saint-poet Meera in 1945 made her famous across India.
Music remained the centre. Her 1963 recording of the Venkateswara Suprabhatam, hymns to wake the deity at dawn, became iconic. As a cultural ambassador she sang at the Edinburgh festival, Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall in 1982 and a Festival of India in Moscow in 1987. With D. K. Pattammal and M. L. Vasanthakumari she was counted among a trinity of women who proved female vocalists could command the most demanding classical concerts. Sarojini Naidu dubbed her the Nightingale of India, and a shade of Kancheepuram silk, MS Blue, carries her initials.
Generosity shaped her career as much as honours did. She gave more than 200 charity concerts, raising well over Rs. 10,000,000, including five benefit performances in 1944 for Gandhi's fund in memory of his wife, and signed away royalties from best-selling records to institutions such as the Veda Patasala of Tirupati. After Sadasivam died in 1997 she stopped performing. She died at home in Chennai on 11 December 2004, aged 88, and a bronze statue of her now stands in Tirupati.
Source: M. S. Subbulakshmi
