The importance of being pious

MS' life also led to observe the turning points in the history of Carnatic musicians, composers and performers of which she was one of the leading figures of her tim

Some 30 years ago a city magazine I worked for had published a cover story on M S Subbulakshmi. In the 1990s Subbulakshmi was Chennai’s living saint. She was an embodiment of south Indian high art and philanthropy and emanated dignity and piety. Above all, she was a woman blessed with an extraordinary gift of music.
 
While Subbulakshmi was a consummate singer, with a huge repertoire learnt from many renowned masters, the songs that had made her hugely popular on the concert circuit and over the airwaves and TV and in popular imagination were not so much to share pleasure or joy but to impart piety and a sense of the sacred. The article had been based on a long interview with M S Amma, as she was then called, and was a detailed description of her life and career written with restraint and admiration. Following the publication, however, a representative from her side turned up at the magazine’s offices to convey her dismay and disappointment that a certain “romantic” photograph of her with a co-star from one of her films had accompanied the article.

 
What would MS and her team say today when biographies and memoirs put her music, her antecedents, private life and relationships under detailed scrutiny? What would she have made of the examination of a beatific artiste on a sacred vocation inspected under the microscope of social, artistic, caste and gendered perspectives?
 

The latest book on Subbulakshmi’s life and times, Of Gifting Voice: The Life and Art of MS Subbulakshmi, is by Keshav Desiraju, a much-respected Indian Administrative Service officer. The exhaustive book is meticulous with dates and details of MS’s career and music and her outstanding achievements and accolades. It also has vivid descriptions of the moral politics that ushered in the anti-Devadasi Act and the impact on classical musicians and dancers; the kind of concert music that took shape in Madras, as Chennai was called then, in the world of Carnatic music, the birth of the sabhas or concert halls and the men who ran them, the bright and interesting musicians, singers, dancers, filmmakers and actors who were Subbulakshmi’s contemporaries and how they compared and contrasted with her.

 
The arrival of the gramophone, the enthusiasm with which many artistes, mainly women, adapted to recording their songs and singing for the radio and how this transformed music and made it available to all was indeed revolutionary. The talkies, too, were a great vehicle for Carnatic musicians to perform before the camera and reach out to the people. MS’s participation in these emerging media is also highlighted by the fact that her rendition of the hymn Venkatesa Suprabhatam is one of the most listened and recorded devotional songs in India even today and her movie Meera remains film gold in Tamil movie canons.

 
The book also delves into the complex aspects of MS’s standing as a musician and a domestic goddess and how she came to be regarded among the rarefied social circles in Chennai. Through MS’s life, her art and times we are also led to observe the turning points in the history of Carnatic musicians, composers and performers of which she was one of the leading figures of her time.
 
Besides shedding a light on the period in which she lived, the book does not shy away from some of the uncomfortable truths about MS’s life and her career as a musician, an actor and a consummate artiste who was feted and critiqued across the world. In fact, Mr Desiraju’s depiction of MS and the personal and professional choices she made is marked by nuanced perceptions and empathy.

 
Details of her parentage, her complex relationship with her mother, and the irony of how she “epitomized the Tamil Brahmin aesthetic” though she was from a different lineage and ancestry, her relationship with the much married Sadasivam, the Gandhian and journalist who managed and tutored her music to appeal to a wider audience, her compliant nature to her domestic situation, financial woes are described to contrast with her public persona that included an amazing circle of admirers such as Jawaharlal Nehru, her international stature and performances in Carnegie Hall and elsewhere on global forums and her many awards (Bharat Ratna, Ramon Magsaysay). Mr Desiraju also raises the question how such a consummate artist acquiesced to changing her music into a limited repertoire of devotional songs that gained her immense popularity nevertheless.

 
Musicologists will find the book filled with knowledgeable details about the kind of compositions, ragams and styles in Carnatic music that have evolved and also details of maestros and accomplished female artistes who all have contributed to the way we receive and experience Carnatic music today.
 
At a time when difficult conversations are being had about Carnatic music, gender and caste, Subbulakshmi’s life and music will shine a light into many of these issues. This is a book whose appeal will be to the aficionado of South Indian classical music and dance as much as those who want to know more about one of the unusual musicians the world has seen.