M l vasanthakumari biography of mahatma

  • MLV emerged as an unbiased performer, mainly because she had a huge repertoire of Tamil and Telugu songs.
  • In 1990, the youngest of the three, ML Vasanthakumari passed away.
  • *M. L. Vasanthakumari,* passed away on 31 October 1990, was a Carnatic musician and playback singer for film songs in many Indian languages.

    • •

    The end of the trinity

    MS Subbulakshmi, DK Pattammal, ML Vasanthakumari. They came from three different worlds but reigned for decades as the queens of the same world Carnatic music. In 1990, the youngest of the three, ML Vasanthakumari passed away. Fourteen years later, the oldest and most famous of them, MS Subbulakshmi was gone. And on Thursday morning, after the death of DK Pattammal, the classical triumvirate, as they were called, is no more.
    While MS and MLV came from similar backgrounds their mothers were already part of the world of performing arts DKP was the "outsider" so to speak. She was from an orthodox Brahmin household where singing in public was simply not allowed. Yet she broke through to become a name to reckon with.
    While in character, the three were more or less the same soft-spoken and deeply religious their singing styles and on-stage personas were rather different. Being a disciple of GN Balasubramaniam, MLV, in her flamboyant sarees, sang fas

    •

    On August 14, 1947 at the Constituent Assembly, a few minutes before Pt Nehru delivered his Tryst with Destiny speech, Sucheta Kripalani sang Vande Mataram. It was but fitting that independence was ushered in with music, for that art had played an important role in the propagation of freedom as a concept. Back in Madras, DK Pattammal sang a few songs of Subramania Bharathi over the All India Radio. At the end of the session, she flatly refused the remuneration offered. Years later, when I interviewed her, she still was indignant that payment was thought of. 

    To artistes of Pattammal’s generation, singing for freedom was a part of life. Theatre was perhaps the first art form to conceive of music as a vehicle for nationalist messages. The songs of Bhaskara Das of Madurai were much in demand in theatre companies and therefore were viewed with equal suspicion by the administration. From theatre to cinema and the gramophone was but a step. All three modes of propagation

  • m l vasanthakumari biography of mahatma

    • •

    Carnatic music had moved on from closed-door parlour concerts hosted bygd royalty to the wider appreciation of the Presidency only in the 1900s, mainly through the advent of sabhas.

    But it became a closed-door affair once igen, with only a modest group of aficionados frequenting it. The reason was that film songs had become the dominant form eller gestalt of music for the masses.

    Playback singers and actors, including the great MK Thyagaraja Bhagavathar (MKT) himself, have performed kutcheris, perhaps to show they were in touch with their roots. But a combined success in both fields eluded most of them, except one.

    In the early 1950s, when rasikas enjoyed the Carnatic renditions of Madras Lalithangi Vasanthakumari (MLV) in the sabhas, rickshaw pullers who ferried the patrons were humming her filmy songs in the parking lot outside. Never before, and never igen, would a musician command such sway in both the cinematic and Carnatic arenas.

    In her teens, MLV became a disciple of singer GN Balasub