Tuesday, August 13, 2013
MADURAI SHANMUKHAVADIVU SUBBULAKSHMI ( 16
September 1916 – 11 December 2004), also known as M.S., was a
renowned Carnatic vocalist. She was the first musician ever to be
awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honor. She is the
first Indian musician to receive the Ramon Magsaysay award, often
considered Asia's Nobel Prize, in 1974 with the citation reading
"Exacting purists acknowledge Srimati M. S. Subbulakshmi as the leading
exponent of classical and semi-classical songs in the Karnataka tradition of
South India."
M.S.
Subbulakshmi began her Carnatic classical music training under her mother
Shanmugavadivu; and later in Hindustani classical training under Pandit
Narayan Rao Vyas. Subbulakshmi first recording was released when she was 10
years old. She gave her first public performance, at the age of eleven, in the
100 pillar hall inside the Rockfort Temple, Tiruchirappalli;
with Mysore Chowdiah on the violin and Dakshinamurthy Pillai on the mriganga.[10] By
the age of 17, Subbulakshmi was giving concerts on her own, including major
performances at the Madras Music Academy, a prestigious centre for the
study and promotion of Carnatic music. Performance in Carnatic music concerts,
was until then, a domain, traditionally reserved for men. She performed a vast
variety of devotional musical forms in different languages includingTamil, Kannada, Sanskrit, Panjabi, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and Marathi.
When
the governor of Madras wanted the famous spiritual leader, Mata Sri
Anandamayi Ma, to reside in his residence, Anandamayi Ma replied, "I will
stay in the house of Subbulakshmi. She is Meera to me." Within two days,
Sadasivam had special quarters built in their garden for Mata to give darshan
and arranged for a new well to be dug nearby for fresh drinking water. Every
evening thousands of people gathered there.
She
traveled to London, New York, Canada, the Far East, and other places as India's
cultural ambassador. Her concerts at
- Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama in
1963
- Carnegie Hall, New York; the UN General Assembly on
UN day in 1966
- Royal Albert Hall, London in 1982
- Festival of India in Moscow in 1987
were
significant landmarks in her career. In 1969 she was accompanied by Indian
Railways Advisor SN Venkata Rao to Rameshwaram, where she famously sang several
songs in front of each idol in the Rameshwaram temple.
After
the death of her husband Kalki Sadasivam in 1997, she stopped all her
public performances.
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