Sangeetha Bhushanam O.V. Subrahmaniam, veteran Carnatic vocalist, who breathed his last this past week in Chennai, exemplified the kind of guru who placed his students ahead of himself in his priorities. The 94-year-old doyen was guru to some of the finest classical vocalists in the Carnatic field, including his sons, the well known O.S. Thiagarajan and O.S. Arun, besides Sai Bhavani of Delhi and the Chennai-based A.K. Ramanujam and Akkarai Subbulakshmi among others. Though based in Chennai for a number of years, he spent many decades in Delhi before that.
An avid footballer in his childhood, Subrahmaniam, say family members, would come home from the field singing the compositions he heard at temple concerts all around him in his native village in Thanjavur district, revered as the original cradle of Carnatic music. His musical talent noticed, he was put, in his early teens, under the tutelage of the era’s finest musicians. Sattur Krishna Iyengar, Tiger Varadachariar and Ponniah Pillai (of the Tanjore Quartet) were his gurus. Later he went to Annamalai Music College where he earned the title of Sangeetha Bhushanam.
The doyen taught music in New Delhi’s oldest cultural organisation dedicated to Carnatic music — Shree Shanmukhananda Sangeetha Sabha — first from 1940 to ’44 and then from 1952 to ’95.
Vocalist and nattuvanar G. Elangovan remembers him as extremely warm and a repository of old world culture, remembering to ask after each member of a visitor’s family and never letting anyone leave his home without a meal.
He epitomised the concept of the parivar-parampara, whose fourth generation is now taking its fledgling steps in the art. Among others, his granddaughter Sudha Raghuraman — daughter of the well known vocalist late O.S. Sridhar — is a sought after singer commended for the quality of her technique. His only daughter Padmavati Natesan teaches music in the Capital, while her daughter Vidya Srinivasan, for years a noted performer in Delhi, is now based in Chennai.
His early sporting prowess was responsible for his robust physique, feels Sudha, and it was not until a fall laid him low a few months ago that he even had much truck with doctors. Recently the doyen was honoured at a large family get-together in Bangalore.
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He would give us space to improvise. He never asked us to memorise a swara or sangati. He was very particular that we should sing in the shruti that suited our voice, rather than follow a trend that could later damage the voice. He always said music is the essence of life. Raga bhava and improvisation were most important to him.
Sudha Raghuraman
He would never let a visitor go without eating. He was a very warm person and would ask about each and every person in your family, even the extended family. Such people are rare today.
G. Elangovan
