Title: M. S. Subbulakshmi: The Definitive Biography
Author: T.J.S. George
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Price: Rs 399/-
Pages: 262
When I was just a boy I was never told
Now son don’t you listen
To that Rock and Roll
We may’ve not had a lot to eat
In the house
But we always had some music
That was playing real loud…
My Momma had soul
Me and Momma’d sit on a bench
Out in the park
We’d hear the jukebox playing
In the corner bar…
My Momma had soul
— My Momma had soul by Lobo
These lyrics from Lobo’s legendry song about music and his mother find a rhythmic resonance in TJS George’s description of the early childhood of M S Subbulakshmi and her two siblings with their mother shanmugavadivu, a devadasi and a well-known Veena player. “They lived music. They might have been apathetic towards food, clothes, creature comforts and education, but about music they were passionate. It filled the house, the street and the city as a whole. Although they did not own a gramophone, all that the children had to do was to sit near an upstairs window and songs played on heir neighbour’s box would be as melodious as if it were their own.”
The music indeed filled the home. While brother M S Shaktivel learnt mridangam and younger sister M S Vadivambal took after her mother to become a Veena player, M S Subbulakshmi turned out to be the vocalist in the family – the one who would eventually become one of India’s greatest classical musicians.
The book narrates the saga of the most-revered Diva of Carnatic music, and is penned by a veteran journalist and biographer who has chronicled the lives of legendary actress Nargis, veteran diplomat and India’s third defence minister V K Krishna Menon, press baron Ramnath Goenka and Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. The most recent addition to this list of notable luminaries is M.S. Subbulakshmi.
For records, the book was published as ‘MS – A Life in Music’ by Harper Collins, India, in 2004 coinciding with the demise of M.S. Subbulakshmi (1916-2004). In 2016, marking her birth centenary celebration the book was republished by Aleph Book Company with a different title and a new preface. Nonetheless, the narrative remains as captivating and fresh as ever.
The author devotes the first 40 pages to trace the history of Carnatic music, explaining the role of religion, caste and language and the prejudices associated with being a female singer. “Carnatic music owes its roots to the 16th century when Pundara Dasa laid the foundations of the world’s most rigorously mathematical musical structure. Two centuries later the Classical Age dawned when three geniuses, the Carnatic Trinity, (Thiagaraja, Muthuswamy Dikshitar and Shyama Shastri) were born in the same village contemporaneously,” writes George. Nonetheless, it was what the singer and scholar T.M. Krishna described, a ‘Brahman-dominated male chauvinistic world’. Hence, the New-Gen of singers — keen to sustain the Carnatic heritage on their own terms — had to contend with issues like “upper caste disapproval of lower caste artistes, and male objection to female singers,” both of which M.S. Subbulakshmi overcame.
However, according to author, while MS was bold and talented enough to make a clear breakthrough, she would have remained just a female singer but for the strategies of her astute husband, Sadasivam, an advertising genius who in mid-1920s was assigned the task of promoting and selling khaddar on behalf of the Congress party. “Never did a man transform a woman’s life as totally as Sadasivam transformed MS’s. Without Sadasivam, MS might just have been a face in the crowd, a great voice among several great voices. With him, she became the ‘Queen of Music’, a title bestowed upon hr by Jawaharlal Nehru. If MS made melody, Sadasivam made MS. If music was MS’s career, MS became Sadasivam’s career.” No wonder, the story is as much about M.S. Subbulakshmi as about Sadasivam.
Additionally, this extremely well-documented book is replete with nuggets of anecdotal information. For instance, we come to know that M.S. Subbulakshmi acted in four films including Meera which was made in Tamil and in Hindi. While Hindi edition had a special, on-screen introduction by Sarojini Naidu, the Tamil version had M G Ramachandran (MGR) in a minor role sporting a turban, much before he attained an iconic status. Moreover, in Tamil films of the day, while “acting was only of incidental importance in the cinema of 1930s… songs were central to films.” As evidence, George reveals that in 1934, Tamil Nadu Talkies produced Lav Kusha which was studded with 72 songs, slightly ahead of J J Madan’s 1932 film Indrasabha with 69 songs! Yet another interesting nugget concerns Jawaharlal Nehru who repeated his “who- am-I-a-mere-Prime-Minister-before-this-Queen-of-Songs” at three successive M.S. Subbulakshmi concerts he attended in 1949, 1953 and 1956! Or the fact that Violin, a western instrument, became an integral part of Carnatic music.
But the real strength of the book is the narrative wherein M.S. Subbulakshmi and some of her women contemporaries like M.L. Vasanthakumari and Pattammal, were able to reshape and reaffirm their role in a male-dominated and patriarchal milieu. And TJS George does this without showering unusual praises on any character – be it M.S. Subbulakshmi or Sadasivam or others. To that extent, the book is not just the enchanting life-sketch of a melody marvel, but a socio-political study of Tamil Nadu, Carnatic music and of M.S. Subbulakshmi herself.
