Suprabhatam Ms Subbulakshmi

[Roselee Kruppa]

Thereprise comes 58 years after it was first recorded for HMV, at the insistence of the YouTube channel @Top Tamil News. The rendering by Aishwarya and Saundarya was launched in Chennai by Ilaiyaraja, legendary composer of film music. Mandolin U Rajesh has arranged the music, with several well-known instrumentalists adding their flourishes to a recording they were eager to be a part of.

For much of south India, mornings are synonymous with the suprabhatam, and MS is revered almost as highly as the deity she invokes. Her recording, also featuring her daughter Radha Viswanathan, has no accompanying instruments other than the tanpura, which provides a resonant drone and highlights her pristine voice. Aishwarya and Saundarya practised continuously for six months to get the raga inflections and the Sanskrit pronunciation right. Their recording comes with interludes commonly heard in studio-produced devotional music, and is aimed at a younger crowd, and perhaps the car stereo.

Gandhi was going all out telling all of India to learn Hindi, and had run into opposition in Tamil Nadu. The Rajaji he refers to is C Rajagopalachari, a big name in the freedom movement from the south. Bengaluru has named a neighbourhood in his honour. Gandhi signed the thank-you letter to Subbulakshmi in Tamil to reassure her, and her legion of admirers in the south, that he was not against the southern languages.

Her great granddaughters S Aishwarya and S Saundarya, already popular on the Karnatik music circuit, are following in her footsteps. They are learning Hindustani music from Omkarnath Havaldar, the young Bengalurean vocalist making waves across India.

Aishwarya and Saundarya spend at least six hours a day practising music. They are both home-schooled, and that has helped them pursue music intensively even as they remain connected to formal academics.

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