Divinely, asexually radiant in her multi-colored zari-shimmering Canjeevaram, her diamond nose rings, her multiple gold necklaces, the white-and-orange jasmine in her oil-coiled hair, and the smudged sandalwood and flaming vermillion on her forehead, I want to believe today that I must have felt then, “Jeez, I can’t find my knees.”) (I only once glimpsed or rather gawked at MS sing a short piece at a Madras High Society wedding. The regret is that despite having grown up not far from this musical world, spatially and socially, and having had access to it at something close to its pinnacle (the 1970s), I had never actually heard MS live in concert. Deracinated and itinerant as life has been, home is still Gopalapuram in Madras which happens to be a stone’s throw from the citadel of Tamil Brahmin musical and cultural dominance, the Music Academy. Of Gifted Voice succeeds at many levels: as biography (mostly), but also as a kind of aesthetic and social history of Chennai and Tamil Nadu of the last century, and as a guide to the Carnatic music tradition.įor this reader, it was also a personal experience of remembrance and retrospective regret. Keshav Desiraju’s superb new biography of the incomparable MS is therefore an overdue call to India and the world to take notice. Why blame the world, it is inadequately appreciated even within India, north of the Vindhyas? Even in this globalized world, the staggering cultural phenomenon that is MS, is insufficiently recognized beyond India’s borders. This has been true for several decades now, and TikTok, YouTube and their mutating successors notwithstanding, it will probably be true for the next several decades as well. Roused from their slumber too are the various gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon as MS sings-chants the Venkateshwara Suprabhatam or Vishnu Sahasrnamam or Bhaja Govindam. Dawn breaks and south India wakes to the celestial voice of Madurai Shanmukkavadivu Subbulakshmi, “MS” to the world.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |