Of Gifted Voice: The Music and Magic of M.S. Subbulakshmi

Of Gifted Voice looks at the life and art of M.S. Subbulakshmi, and the great musical tradition she belonged to and to which she brought so much, against the larger backdrop of the developments in the world of Carnatic music. The book also delves into her brush with films as well as her famed concert style – find out a little more about the gifted genius and experience for yourself the magic of her voice.

The trinity, Syama Sastri, Tyagaraja and Muthusvami Dikshitar were handsomely represented in this recital, as also Svati Tirunal and Purandaradasa. There is an ancient tevaram composition, one of a post-trinity composer, a modern composition and a bhajan. The occurrence of two pieces in the raga Suddhasaveri suggests that this may be an amalgam of two separate recitals; it does, however, hold together perfectly.

‘An August 1978 recital which is worth noting is the one Subbulakshmi gave at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Bombay. ‘Vatapi’/Hamsadhwani, ‘Cheta Sri Balakrishnam’/Jujavanti, ‘Banturiti’/Hamsanadam, ‘Marakatamanivarna’/Varali, ‘Nidhi tsala sukhama’/Kalyani and ‘Kamakshi’/Bhairavi formed the core of the recital. For regular listeners, there was nothing new but it was flawlessly performed’.

Hear the mesmerising music from that memorable concert here!

This is a brief introduction to the musical world of M.S. Subbulakshmi (1916-2004) and can be used as an accompaniment to Of Gifted Voice. Subbulakshmi was a consummate concert artiste, with a performing history that spanned a period of almost seventy years. She sang widely at music sabhas, in the big cities as well as in smaller towns, on radio and, later, television, at wedding recitals and high-profile benefit events, on the most prestigious platforms in the world and for private gatherings. And it is as a concert artiste that she must be remembered, for all that most of her commercially released recordings are chants, hymns, bhajans and devotional verses. It is only more recently that full length concerts, recorded privately, have begun to appear on sites such as Youtube and www.sangeethapriya.org., and in institutional collections such as at the Music Academy Madras at Chennai and the James Rubin Collection at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

The United Nations concert of October 1966, the Sangitha Kalanidhi concert at the Music Academy, Madras at Chennai in December 1968, the Concert Album recorded in the HMV studio in 1970, the two concerts at Mumbai and Chennai in 1975 to commemorate the bicentenary of Muthusvami Dikshitar, the Carnegie Hall concert of October 1977 and her last major appearance, at the Swaralaya Puraskaram Kanchi Mahaswami Manimantapam concert in June 1997 are milestones in Subbalakshmi’s performing career. Many of these are available as commercial recordings.

This brief selection is limited to those commercially released recordings which are also available on Spotify and are arranged to broadly correspond to the various stages of Subbulakshmi’s career identified in Of Gifted Voice.

Click here to relive some of the concerts held at various stages of M.S.’s career!

‘It is possible to distinguish, over Subbulakshmi’s very long performing career, several stages, each with a dominant aspect. Ramaswami R. Iyer, civil servant and rasika, has identified seven stages and we can select, from among the available recordings of Subbulakshmi, presentations that best depict those stages, and approximate time periods. In her very early career, essentially over the 1930s, Subbulakshmi’s bell-like voice was the marker, best represented by, from among the few recordings we still have, the song ‘Syama sundara’ from Sevasadanam or the ragamalika viruttam from Sakuntalai. The 1940s reveal a voice which is still bell-like and crystal clear but more classically oriented as in the 1942 recording of Suddhananda Bharati’s ‘Arul purivai’/ Hamsadhwani or the 1950 ‘Narayana divya namam’/Mohana.
Our rasika identifies the third stage in Subbulakshmi’s performing career as one where she was maturing as a great artiste; the 1956 concert at Bhavani is a fine exemplar of this time with its tight structure, fast renderings and a full display of musical virtuosity. The full flowering of Subbulakshmi’s musical prowess came with the early 1960s. The ragamalika ‘Bhavayami Raghuramam’, or the 1966 United Nations concert in its entirety represent this stage, a time when her voice was at its most rounded, most mature and capable of the most extraordinary feeling and had not yet begun to show signs of fatigue. The late 1960s to the mid-1970s had Subbulakshmi shining as a great classical musician but one whose voice had lost its bell-like quality of the previous decades. To many, this was Subbulakshmi at her best. The recordings of the Music Academy concerts of 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1971 show her in complete, joyous control. The pace is slower and more measured, the alapanas more thoughtful, the concert structure more complete. The sixth stage is Subbulakshmi’s late mature phase; ‘Vande Vasudevam’/Sri from the Annamacharya selections is a good example of this period. The last stage in her performing career relates actually to a time when she had effectively retired but was still singing; a period when she was ageing. This was beginning to be obvious as in the 1989 recording of ‘Sada saranga nayane’/Ranjani’.