Feb 15, 1999
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D K PATTAMMAL Matriarch of Music The vocalist's music is marked by the three Ds--dignity, discipline and depth. By S Kalidar Draped in her native Kanchipuram silk sari with a rust red pottu (bindi), diamond nose ring and earrings, she could be the archetypal Madrasi matron. But D.K. Pattammal, who has been awarded the Padma Vibhushan by the Indian government and the Kalidas Samman by the state of Madhya Pradesh this year, is no ordinary matriarch. Behind her mild exterior exists an artist of extraordinary gifts. Acknowledged by the cognoscenti as the most accomplished lady vocalist in the past six decades and more, she stands tall as the last pillar of classicism in the fast changing world of Carnatic music.
Today at the age of 80, sitting in her Kotturpuram house Pattammal spends most of her time teaching students and her granddaughter Nityashree. She no longer performs as often as she used to and seldom moves out of the house. "With age my legs are giving way and movement has become very difficult for me," she complains, albeit cheerfully. Also, as you provoke her into nostalgia -- of times gone by and her musical journey through the decades -- she is liable to be overcome by emotion. From across the room, Iswaran Iyer, her husband, manager and guide for more than half a century, prompts, supplements and interprets as much out of reflex as out of participation. "For 50 years we spent three weeks every month touring from city to city for Patta's concerts," he says. "Now, we need to take it easy." "As I receive these national honours," says Pattammal, "my thoughts go to my father and my school headmistress who put me on this musical journey when I was just a child of nine." Young Pattammal showed a precocious talent for music and Sanskrit from the age of five. "My father would teach me Sanskrit shlokas and I would have no trouble memorising them in hundreds. And I would sing them in tune." This talent was noticed by the headmistress of her school who cast her in a school play. "It was a singing role and I performed it without fear or hitch. A local shopkeeper was so pleased by my performance that he stood up and declared that he would award me a gold medal," she recalls. The next day when he actually turned up with the promised medal, the headmistress was so thrilled that she promptly released the news and a picture of Pattammal to The Hindu newspaper which published it on its front page. This got Pattammal's father, D. Krishnaswamy Dikshitar, extremely worried. "It is a scandal! Who will marry my daughter now?" he asked the headmistress, accusing her of spoiling the young girl's life for ever. But the headmistress and a local Congressman, Dr P.S. Srinivasan, prevailed on him that his daughter was a gifted child destined for greater things. After the publicity in The Hindu, it did not take long for the Columbia Gramophone Company's talent spotters to visit Kanchipuram with an offer to record the girl prodigy. Again, her father was terrified but Srinivasan convinced him to let Pattammal record. "If you are so anxious about your daughter's marriage let me tell you that I will marry my nephew to her when she is of age," Srinivasan assured her father. And true to his word, Pattammal was married to Srinivasan's nephew Ishwaran Iyer when she was 20 years old. And in contrast to the mores of Brahminical orthodoxy of those times, her husband not only encouraged her to continue her music but in fact soon gave up his job to manage and guide her professional career. Pattammal's music is marked by the three Ds -- dignity, discipline and depth. Although she did sing for some patriotic films in her early career and attained great popularity through them, she has essentially been a serious classicist all her life. And what she sings, though seemingly simple is actually an exercise in studied simplicity . As a woman, she carries herself with humility. She has none of the glamour of a prima donna. Yet she was quite a radical in her own way. At the peak of the British rule she sang and popularised the patriotic songs of Bharatiyar defying threats of arrest and incarceration. As she looks around her today, she feels, "In quantitative terms things have improved vastly. It is much easier for young people to take to music professionally and the concert fees have skyrocketed. But what we have gained materially seems to be in direct contrast to what we have lost in qualitative terms. Where is the sadhana, the thirst for knowledge? Everything is so easily available in the market today." About herself she says that her only wish is to be able to sing till her last breath. "When the time comes I should go with a song on my lips," she says. Knowing her grit, it might just come true. |
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Before Pattammal's time the role of
women in Carnatic music was largely ornamental. They mostly sang lighter genres like
padams and javallis and invariably hailed from the devadasi community. They sang in
private soirees but were never allowed to participate in public concerts which were a male
domain. "Pattammal was the first woman from the Brahmin middle class to break into
this male bastion," says Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, the 92-year-old Carnatic music
doyen. "For that achievement alone she deserves kudos." Along with M.S.
Subbulakshmi and the late M.L. Vasantakumari, Pattammal formed the troika of divas who
ruled the Carnatic music scene through the better part of this century. According to
dancer and author Lakshmi Viswanathan, "M.S. was the queen by dint of her exceptional
looks and voice quality. She also took care to structure her concerts with the suitability
of different audiences in mind and never took any risks on stage." In contrast,
M.L.V. was a great adventurer: each concert was different from her last because of her
spontaneous originality. "A veritable tigress," adds Lakshmi, "she was
younger than the other two and could converse fluently in English and had a great sense of
humour. Unfortunately, she died young." With Pattammal there are no tantrums, no
flashes of moods, she never goes out of her way to do anything virtuosic to impress. Yet
there is an experience of rasa in that control. Her delineation of the raga, her knowledge
of rare compositions and her transparent bhakti never fail to touch the audience,
"especially when she stands on the top shadajam, it is sheer bliss". 
