She is quite traditional in appearance. She will be 75 on March 28 and not surprisingly, she looks like an elderly matron. But, even in her twenties, when she had a radiantly beautiful face, she wrapped herself in a sari so well that, projecting a picture of modesty, she could have aroused the envy of Draupadi. On stage, then as now, she sat like a rock as she sang, moving little and gesticulating not at all; interestingly even the music she offered was solid as a rock.
In her role too as a wife and mother, she has been deeply conservative, showing deference to her husband, R.Iswaran, in all matters, including music. So much so, because Iswaran disapproves of the cinema, she stopped going to see any after they were married! She sat on pins and needles for more than 35 years eagerly waiting to see M.S.Subbulakshmi in `Meera' and had her wish fulfilled only when the film was telecast.
Traditional and conservative -- yes, indeed. And yet she has been a revolutionary, a pathfinder, and a liberated career woman, expressing her individuality as a musician. Perhaps those interested in women's liberation in the country would find that her life and career represent a unique blend of tradition and change.
Even as a little girl, Pattammal had an aptitude for music. She learnt to sing without going through formal step-by-step lessons, although she had teachers then as later. And she was neither shy nor scared to sing before an audience. None of this, however, could have led anyone to expect she would have a professional career in music, given the social circumstances prevailing at that time. Among women -- insofar as art music was concerned -- singing for the public was restricted to those who belonged to the Isai Vellala caste. Virtually no Brahmin family would dare allow its daughter to enter the performing arts arena. Moreover, Pattammal's father was a conservative who had difficulty in contemplating anything but an early marriage for her.
In the event, these circumstances could not hold Pattammal down. Her musical gifts were too precious to be ignored and the Columbia Gramaphone Company came forward to record her after seeing in a newspaper, a photograph of Pattammal which the headmistress of her school had arranged to be published in order to draw atten tion to her talents. Thereafter, although still troubled by the idea of deviating from tradition, her father yielded to sugges tions that the young girl should be groomed as a musician. He took her to Madras from Kanchipuram, where the family lived, and arranged for her further training. And it was not long before Pattammal made her debut as concert musician. This was in 1933, when she was but 14 years old. In retrospect, it was a historic event, for she was the first girl from among the forward communities to break through the caste barrier and take to singing in public. She was, indeed, a trailblazer.
In the years that followed, as her music gained in depth and amplitude, she crossed yet another barrier, that of the gender. In the early Thirties, it was taboo for women, even devadasis, to display their manodharma when performing in public; they were expected to restrict themselves to rendering the song demurely. As I wrote elsewhere commenting on this aspect; "Manodharma, it seemed, was considered a man's dharma and women had to follow Manu's dharma and refrain from pushing themselves forward. Such taboos were, of course, enjoined by men, even if they were per haps willingly respected by the womenfolk of those times. It was therefore ironical that the men, especially male musicians, at the same time described the circumscribed music of the women derisively as ladies' music and considered it inferior to their own.
M.S.Subbulakshmi, D.K.Pattammal and M.L.Vasanthakumari -- the Carnatic music trinity of the modern times -- finished off this fashionable fallacy that ladies' music was inferior. In this context, I should like to recall what I wrote about DKP in `Sruti': "Pattammal's contribution has been that of a pioneer. She it was that emerged as the role model for other women singers by daring to do on the concert stage what had earlier been proscribed. Manodharma was nor her forte, may be, but she deployed her mastery of laya to render ragam-thanam-pallavi as no woman had even attempted to do before. She broke the ice not with a pickax but with an icebreaker of a ship. Many a male chauvinist musician has perforce acknowledged that, yes, indeed women can sing like men -- that at least Pattammal could."
Pattammal was thus a pathfinder too, providing inspiration to other women musicians to sing with freedom, without being inhib ited by the accident of their gender.
Laya was of course only one facet of her music which won her respect and admiration. She excelled too in rendering kriti-s, with perfect diction. As a critic once observed: "With her deep-toned voice.... her deep roots in classicism and sound knowledge of gamaka, she could render every song unhurriedly, with progressive and logical sangati-s, and the musical expres sion became enjoyable."
Pattammal was a pioneer in regard to another aspect of art music as well. At a time when even those musicians who included Tamil songs in their performances relegated them to the tailend of their concerts, she began singing a Tamil composition or two even in the pre-pallavi segment.
It was entirely consistent with this remarkable record of achievement that she played a leading role in popularising, through her recordings, the songs of Subramania Bharati, the freedom poet, and that she embellished the music of films like `Naam Iruvar' with her mellifluous singing.
There was an yet another barrier that this steeplechase runner of a musician had to jump over. Yet another gender barrier, in fact. The combined impact of the separate contributions of Subbulakshmi, Pattammal and Vasanthakumari had, by the Sixties if not earlier, smashed the silly notion of male superiority in music. The maestros and the mandarins who ruled the Music Academy of Madras, that mecca of carnatic music, had inevitably to consider inviting a woman musician of their calibre to preside over the annual conference of the Academy and to receive the title of Sangeeta Kalanidhi that goes with the responsibility.
At that time, if both MS and DKP were respected as well as popular musicians, the congnoscenti seemed to respect Pattammal's music a bit more even as they acknowledged MS was the more popu lar of the two. Yet, the record shows that the credit of being the first woman musician to receive the Sangeeta Kalanidhi title went to MS. Not many know even today that it was DKP who was initially selected for this honour and that she was even apprised of it by some of the numbers of the Experts' Committee of the Academy. Reportedly even at this stage some influential members argued in favour of MS and Pattammal herself agreed to the suggestion that MS might be honoured first. A sequel to this story is that, in the following year, when there was a wish to honour Madurai Srirangam Iyengar a senior musician, Pattammal volunteered the suggestion that she should wait yet another year. In the event, Pattammal received the Sangeeta Kalanidhi title in 1970.
A paradigm of tradition in personal life, Pattammal as a musician has thus been a revolutionary, a trailblazer and a pathfinder. If her contribution to music has been immense, her role in the emancipation of women musicians can only be termed historic. Significantly, and in contrast to the present day trend, she has made her contribution almost unobtrusively, without media hype.
There was yet another notable achievement. In her heyday, she stood shoulder to shoulder with giants of Carnatic vocal music like Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar, Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar, Musiri Subramania Iyer, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, G.N.Balasubramaniam and Madurai Mani Iyer, all senior to her in age. Like them, she too played a crucial role in building up an audience for Carnatic classical music, without compromising her artistic integrity, after the patronage of the art had shifted from princes and she landed gentry to the lay public organised in sabhas. She and MS were among the icons who transformed thou sands of casual listeners into devotees of art music.
In an appreciation of Pattammal's life and career, a veteran "observer wrote 10 years ago (in Sruti)." Up and coming women vocalists -- and why not men as well? -- could do no better than take DKP as their guide and model. Her uncompromising adherence to tradition while putting her own individual stamp on it, her willingness to blaze new trials, her sense of moderation, her dedication and systematic approach to learning -- and continuous learning at that -- and her innate grace and sense of humility are virtues worthy of emulation. This sums up the unique personality perfectly.
