(c) The Hindu, April 01, 1994. All rights reserved. This article was made available by: "Puduhai Sreeram" D. K. Pattammal - Legendary Talent The Hindu, April 01, 1994 Lakshmi Venkataraman ---------------------------------------------------------------------- When one has talent, maturity and humility, one needs little else to become an instant success. In the case of D.K. Pattammal she has a good measure of all this. Her talent has been legendary, even before she turned a teenager she was spotted as a prodigy. Her transparent sincerely and composure have been reflected in her concerts which have been carefully planned and executed in the last six decades. Her humility, not a common commodity these days, has to be seen to be believed. As a three month old baby, Ramana Maharishi, whom her parents frequently visited, smeared honey on her tongue and blessed the child. The musician recalls this event as narrated to her by her father and says that it is perhaps the reason why someone like her hailing from a family not known for musical talent became a successful performing artiste. She also declares that the bless ings of the Paramacharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam has led her to where she is today in the carnatic musical world. When she was young, as her family lived in Kancheepuram, she used to sing Shyamaladandakam and other Stotrams during the Puja of the Sanka racharya and he used to encourage and bless her efforts. This was the first step in her venturing into her musical explora tions, as it were. Pattammal had a natural flair for music that she was able to repeat the songs she listened to, particularly during the Thyaga raja Aradhana conducted by the well known Vidwan Kancheepuram Nayana Pillai. She holds him in great esteem since his Vidwat was so great that in spite of not having a good concert coice, he was able to hold his audience. She learnt music from his disci ple Krishnaswamy Iyengar. She recalls with gratitude and happi ness that so many people volunteered to teach her. One such was the Telugu Pandit, whose name she still does not know who heard her and her brother sing a couple of songs in a wedding. He was so taken by the child's talent, that he stayed in Kancheepuram for three weeks and taught her six compositions of Thyagaraja including "Koluvamregadha", "Lekhana" and "Thulasibilva". As a girl of less than ten Pattammal acted in a school drama 'Savithri Satyavan". A report of this appeared with her photo graph in the newspaper. This upset her family very much, as it was not considered proper for a girl from a Brahmin family to be written about in newspapers. But it marked the beginning of her musical profession, as recording companies approached her. Though her father was reluctant, the headmistress of her school and the local Congress Party personality Srinivasa Iyer, (the uncle of her future husband), encouraged them to go ahead. This also led to her singing for films, though with the condition that she would not sing love songs. It is astonishing to learn that she had never seen films, even those for which she sang except "Naam Iruvar". Even at the age of 10, in 1929, she was singing on Corporation Radio. It was also around this time that she came to Madras to appear for the Government music examination and one of the exam iners was Ambi Dikshitar, the grand-nephewof one of the Carnatic musical trinity, Sri Muthuswami Dikshitar. Impressed by her singing of "Sri Subrahmanyaya Namaste" he offered to teach her. He taught her a few compositions of Dikshitar during the ten days and asked the family to come back later on during the holidays. But before they could do so, Ambi Dikshitar was called to Et tayapuram, where he died soon after. Pattammal had the good fortune of learning the compositions of the great Papanasam Sivan from the composer himself. She is one of those who popularised Tamil compositions, those of Sivan and Subramania Bharatiyar. Her records of "Theerada Vilayattuppil lai', "Vetri Ettu Dikkum" and 'Aaduvome Pallu Paaduvome" were very popular numbers. Similarly her name has become almost synonymous with Dikshitar kritis; she has made it a point to present at least two of his compositions in every concert. After Ambi Dikshitar, it was T.L. Vehkatarama Iyer, former judge of the Supreme Court, who thought her many of Dikshitar's compositions. Pattammal is also well known for her rendering of ragam-tanam- pallavi, in quite difficult tala patterns such as Sankeerana Druva Talam. She practices such pallavis any number of times till she is in total control of the talam, before she presents it in a concert. She does not have anyone doing the talam in front of her, in fact she finds it distracting. In the past she had also presented four-five hour concerts: That too, she says, was not difficult, if one sang the kritis of the great composers, interspersed with a few good raga delineations and also a Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi and finally some good Tukkadas. It was Narasimhalu Naidu, the nephew of Tirupati Narayanaswamy Naidu, who first taught her to sing pallavis and he also taught her some of his uncle's compositions. In all her 50 years of unbroken appearances in the annual conference of the Music Acade my, Madras, she has never repeated a single pallavi. The Academy conferred the Sangeeta Kalanidhi title on her in 1970. Pattammal's repertoire is phenomenal. How does she remember all the songs? Even today when she learns a new song, she sings it over a hundred times before she knows it perfectly; she does not approve of the habit of some of the musicians referring to books during a concert. Pattammal demands the same discipline from her students. She does not allow them to record lessons though she is prepared to sing a song any number of times till they learn it properly. Pattammal sincerely sticks to the original version of a composi tion as written by the composer, though she may just add a few "sangatis." At the age of 75 even today she continues to learn new pieces and teaches with the same dedication. Her chief disci ple was her own younger brother D.K. Jayaraman, who passed away at the peak of his career. She never says "no" to anyone who is interested in learning from her; she has students even from foreign countries such as Singapore, Japan and France. What she resents in the modern generation is the lack of respect for elders and where music is concerned the lack of reverence for our divine music. She likes to listen to concerts by other young or old Vidwans and Vidushis too but she is unhappy about the recent trend of filling the programme with too many light ragas, which affects the depth and weight of a concert. Pattammal remembered some of her unforgettable concerts for which huge crowds had gathered such as those at the temple mandapam in Suchindram, where she had to be escorted away under security to escape from the milling crowd; in Salem, Tenali, Tirunakkara near Kottayam and Kayamozhi near Tiruchendur. At Tirunakkara she not only sang "Srirangapuravihara" twice on public demand, but she even had to sing two Ragam-Tanam-Pallavis, which she feels is a very rare occurrence indeed: at Kayamozhi the concert lasted from 10 p.m. till five the next morning, an incredible seven hours. --------------------------------------------------------------------- (c) The Hindu, April 01, 1994. All rights reserved.