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Tamil Nadu - Fine arts - Legends - M. S. Subbulakshmi

M. S. Subbulakshmi Move to Madras

In 1936, with her popularity as a Carnatic vocalist on the rise, Subbulakshmi moved to Madras (now Chennai . The same year, she also made her film debut in Sevasadan.
Musical style and performance
Singing career

Subbulakshmi first recording was released when she was 10 years old. She gave her first public performance during the Mahamaham festival at Kumbakonam at the age of sixteen.

She began her Carnatic classical music training under her mother Shanmugavadivu and then Hindustani classical training under Pandit Narayan Rao Vyas. By the age of 17, Subbulakshmi was giving concerts on her own, including major performances at the Madras Music Academy, a prestigious centre for the study and promotion of Carnatic music. Performance in Carnatic music concerts, was until then, a domain, traditionally reserved for men. She performed a vast variety of devotional musical forms panjabi in different languages including Tamil, Kannada, Sanskrit, Panjabi, Hindi, Malayalam,Telugu , Bengali, Gujarati and Marathi.

When the governor of Madras wanted the famous spiritual leader, Mata Sri Anandamayi Ma, to reside in his residence, Anandamayi Ma replied, "I will stay in the house of Subbulakshmi. She is Meera to me." Within two days, Sadasivam had special quarters built in their garden for Mata to give darshan and arranged for a new well to be dug nearby for fresh drinking water. Every evening thousands of people gathered there.

She traveled to London, New York, Canada, the Far East, and other places as India's cultural ambassador. Her concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York; the UN General Assembly on UN day in 1966; the Royal Albert Hall, London in 1982; and at the Festival of India in Moscow in 1987 were significant landmarks in her career. In 1969 she was accompanied by Indian Railways Advisor SN Venkata Rao to Rameshwaram, where she famously sang several songs in front of each idol in the Rameshwaram temple.

After the death of her husband Sadasivam in 1997, she stopped all her public performances.


Films

M.S. also acted in a few Tamil films in her youth. Her first movie "Sevasadanam" was released in 1938. MS Subbulakshmi also played the male role of Narada in "Savitri" (1941) to raise money for launching Kalki, her husband's nationalist Tamil weekly. Her title role of the Rajasthani saint-poetess Meera in the eponymous film (1945) gave her national prominence. This movie was re-made in Hindi in 1947. The movie had M.S Subbulakshmi. sing the famous Meera bhajans, with Dilipkumar Roy as the music director. Later, she quit films and turned wholly to concert music.

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Indian classical music is categorized under two genres. They are Hindustani and Carnatic. Broadly Hindustani developed in the northern regions of the country
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