Did you know that Carnatic vocalist Bangalore Nagarathnamma was the first ever musician to have paid taxes to the British government in the early 1900s, and was the first Indian woman to have braved her way to perform in Jaffna? She and M.S. Subbulakshmi were among the first women musicians to be accompanied by men on the mridanga and violin when it was considered a societal taboo.
An account of rare informationon the two musical greats, who come from a Devadasi lineage, has been recorded in two recently released books in Kannada — Ditta Kalavide Bengaluru Nagarathnamma and Manadolagina Suprabhata M.S. Subbulakshmi, authored by N. Jagadish Koppa and published by Vikasa Prakashana. “It is the first two in a series planned on artistes from the Devadasi community who have contributed to cultural progress,” said Dr. R. Poornima of Vikasa Prakashana.
“While in Tamil Nadu, I chanced upon the Devadasi cult and their poetic and melodic inheritance that contributed immensely to the country’s progress in art and culture. Both were steely women… M.S. was known as the ‘daughter of Shanmukhavadivu,’ and Nagarathnamma as the ‘daughter of Puttalakshamma’,” writes Koppa.
The author goes on to find out on Nagarathnamma that the Oxford University Press in 1991 in the chapter on ‘Women Writers of India’ includes her as the “first woman writer of India” as she had, in 1917, edited the 17th Century Telugu classical poetry Radhika Swantanamu, which got embroiled into controversies for its bold, lyrical features.
Nagarathnamma was born in 1872 at Nanjangud and was brought to Mysuru as a toddler, before she entered Bengaluru and later settled in Tamil Nadu. Her time at Nagarathpet and later at Naraharirayana Gudde, where Judge Narahari Rao built a house for her, are little known facts. “That she sold her house to make money for building a Samadhi of Tyagaraja is common knowledge now,” says Mr. Koppa.
