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GRK Murty
Man is endowed with divinity. It is natural for him to transcend gross
materialism. Ideas take shape by an unknown alchemy from within.
This force indeed pervades the whole of universe. Its natural destiny is
true expression. Thus, emerge the arts—literature, music, dance,
sculpture, etc. To enjoy literature—its architectonic quality, harmony
between action and expression, the author’s intense feeling for the
characters that he dramatizes, his allusiveness, the happy coalescence
of matter and style, the marriage between the thought and the form
that confirms to every mood of grace and dignity—one has to read,
reread, think, and meditate upon to understand it; and the more one
meditates, the more the rasa that one enjoys. Unlike literature, to
enjoy music, one need not labor—the very act of listening makes one
swing in beatitude. Which is why it is said: sisurvetti, pasurvetti, vetti
ganarasam phanihi—infants, cattle and snakes too rejoice in the sound
of music.
Pundits of Carnatic music said of her: “Child you carry the veena in
your throat”. Bade Gulam Alikhan, a thespian of Hindustani music said
of her: Suswaralakshmi Subbulakshmi—goddess of perfect tone and
auspiciousness. It is not the technique of execution of a raga, rather it
is the communication of a mood, an ecstasy of emotion— rasadhwani,
the experience of the ultimate unison with the supreme—that enabled
her to earn plaudits from fellow musicians belonging to different
cultures and systems of music.
Though she hailed from Tamil Nadu, she could sing Guru Nanak’s
Nam japan kyon chod diya that is in a language other than her mother
tongue, with ‘pleas’ pouring out from deep within. Her bhajans in Hindi
in right intonation made her popular all over India. Listening to her
singing the moving composition, Vaishnava Janato, one can’t but shed
tears. Even lay men with no understanding of Sanskrit could sway with
‘bhakti’ that they could sense in MS’s rendition of Venkateswara
Suprabhatam or Annapoornashtakam in chaste Sanskrit. The way she
sings Vishnu Sahasranamam, her devotion, her tone, her pitch, her
perfect pronunciation which is inimitable and flawless makes even
pundits of Sanskrit wonder: “How does she have that flawless
enunciation we scholars are unable to achieve through several birth
cycles?”
This leaves one in wonder: How could she enchant the commoner as
well as pundits of all languages of India by singing kritis written in so
many different languages with equal felicity? The answer is simple: It is
her phenomenal devotion to music which enabled her to go under the
skin of each word in the kriti of whatever language, internalize its
meaning and emote its soul through her golden voice in perfect sruti
alignment and fidelity to raga. She remained a lifelong learner. She
acquired compositions in several languages from a host of
practitioners, all with a longing for perfection. She humbly practiced
thinking more deeply and ripely about the bhava of every word and it is
with respect and humility that she brought out the soul of the words in
a kriti—be it in any language. It is simply her grasp of technique and
immense devotion to tradition that made her a pan-Indian favorite.
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