ms subbulakshmi tamil suprabhatam free download

Acquiring permanent legitimacy in caste-ridden south India was the not-unhappy not unintended consequence. Sadasivam as a means of escaping the stigma of being a devadasi (court musicians who historically almost surely doubled up as courtesans). MS at the age of 20 abandons her unmarried mother in favour of her future husband T. Srinivas’ famous thesis of upward mobility-“Sanskritisation” in his immortal term-in India. More seriously, the critical decisions of MS in her early life provide vivid, textural evidence to M.N. That MS was probably the daughter of one of the great musicians, Madurai Pushpavanam Iyer, that she might have been the “cousin” of another Carnatic music giant Madurai Mani Iyer, and that MS herself re-wrote her biography to change the identity of her father, all make for some titillation (although the tone of Desiraju’s book and its broader sensibility is anything but). MS’ childhood, the stuff of gossip and doctored history, is fascinatingly described. But I stand before a queen the queen of great art, music.”).

In Of Gifted Voice, Keshav Desiraju, the highly regarded bureaucrat-turned-author gives us-in rough chronological sequence-five MS’s: the Sanksritizing devadasi the project of the strategic, even scheming, Sadasivam, her husband the contemporary of other artistic talents, especially women the changing, re-inventing musician and, finally, the transcendent public and international performer and star who now inhabits the Indian public consciousness as the Singer Celestial, anointed as such by no less than Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru (“I am the Prime Minister. Srinivas’ famous thesis of upward mobility-“Sanskritisation” in his immortal term-in India… He critical decisions of MS in her early life provide vivid, textural evidence to M.N. Stephens College nor rooted enough in Gopalapuram, mine was the fate of many of midnight’s children, Na Ghar Ka, Na Ghat Ka. I was to discover over time that nothing would ever come close as an aesthetic-cum-spiritual experience to that of MS: singing the refrain “ meena lochini pasha mochini manini kadamba vana vasini” in the Raga Purvi Kalyani or lingering at the end of the crescendo “ shambho” in the Raga Bauli or repeatedly invoking “ govinda, govinda” to summarize a fulfilled lifetime in the Rajaji creation “ Korai onrum illai.” And to rub salt in the wound, when I did arrive in Delhi, it had moved on to Bob Dylan, Jethro Tull, and the more acidic forms of rock. That loss was of course a direct consequence of-and deserved payback for-the then adolescent wanting to learn the guitar and play Killing Me Softly to fit into hip, beckoning Delhi.

Divinely, asexually radiant in her multi-colored zari-shimmering Canjeevaram, her diamond nose rings, her multiple gold necklaces, the white-and-orange jasmine in her oil-coiled hair, and the smudged sandalwood and flaming vermillion on her forehead, I want to believe today that I must have felt then, “Jeez, I can’t find my knees.”) (I only once glimpsed or rather gawked at MS sing a short piece at a Madras High Society wedding. The regret is that despite having grown up not far from this musical world, spatially and socially, and having had access to it at something close to its pinnacle (the 1970s), I had never actually heard MS live in concert. Deracinated and itinerant as life has been, home is still Gopalapuram in Madras which happens to be a stone’s throw from the citadel of Tamil Brahmin musical and cultural dominance, the Music Academy. Of Gifted Voice succeeds at many levels: as biography (mostly), but also as a kind of aesthetic and social history of Chennai and Tamil Nadu of the last century, and as a guide to the Carnatic music tradition.įor this reader, it was also a personal experience of remembrance and retrospective regret. Keshav Desiraju’s superb new biography of the incomparable MS is therefore an overdue call to India and the world to take notice. Why blame the world, it is inadequately appreciated even within India, north of the Vindhyas? Even in this globalized world, the staggering cultural phenomenon that is MS, is insufficiently recognized beyond India’s borders. This has been true for several decades now, and TikTok, YouTube and their mutating successors notwithstanding, it will probably be true for the next several decades as well.

Roused from their slumber too are the various gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon as MS sings-chants the Venkateshwara Suprabhatam or Vishnu Sahasrnamam or Bhaja Govindam. Dawn breaks and south India wakes to the celestial voice of Madurai Shanmukkavadivu Subbulakshmi, “MS” to the world.

Ms subbulakshmi tamil suprabhatam free download