Vaikom Vijayalakshmi: Music is everything to me

Singer Vaikom Vijayalakshmi, whose last hit was in Jai Bhim, on entering the television space with Namma Madurai Sisters

Vaikom Vijayalakshmi

Vaikom Vijayalakshmi likes new beginnings. She was born on October 7, 1981, but she usually refers to her birthday as being the day of ‘Vijayadasami’, a festival that is considered auspicious to start something afresh.

After almost a decade of singing in the film industry, she has tried something new: croon for a TV serial. Her bold voice adorns the background score of Namma Madurai Sisters, a new serial currently airing in Colors Tamil. “We recorded it online, from Vaikom’s Gowri Studios,” says the visually-challenged singer, over a virtual conversation from her hometown in Kerala, “I liked the tune by Sidhu Kumar. It’s my first Tamil serial and the lyrics are about women-empowerment.”

While Vijayalakshmi hails from Kerala, it was in Chennai, then Madras, that she first discovered her musical talent. “My father (Muraleedharan) had an electronic business in the city, so I was here till I turned five years old. It was a great phase, because I repeatedly kept listening to MSV and Ilaiyaraaja’s Tamil songs. I used to keep humming them.”

Back then, she devoured songs from the 1985 hit Sindhu Bhairavi (“I used to keep singing ‘Naan Oru Sindhu…”). After her family moved back to her hometown in Kerala, she devoted a lot of time to listening to cassettes of singer KJ Yesudas, MS Subbalakshmi and Balamuralikrishna. “Listening to these greats helped me embark on my musical journey.”

A new sound

Vaikom Vijayalakshmi is an expert at playing a rare musical instrument called the Gayathri veena; in 2015, she made it to the record books by playing it continuously for 6.5 hours. “When I was 15, my co-brother made a veena out of a plastic bottle and a string, just for fun. In Malayalam, we call it kali veena. I remember using a spoon to play it. Much later, my father improvised and invented a one-string veena, which legendary violinist Kunakudi Vaidyanthan named as the ‘Gayatri veena’. I love playing it. I have also tried playing the keyboard, mridangam, table, ghatam and kazoo,” says Vijayalakshmi, whose other favourites include playing the ‘pee pee’ that children usually buy outside temples.

While classical music remains her first love, it was film music that gave her wide-spread fame and recognition, which she describes as her life’s “turning point”. “Malayalam composer M Jayachandran once listened to a rendition of mine in Amritavarshini raga. He commented that my voice was similar to that of MS Subbalakshmi, which was a huge compliment.” Vijayalakshmi went on to debut in Celluloid (2013), directed by Kamal, and has since forayed into all major film industries. While her first Tamil outing was in Santhosh Narayanan’s Cuckoo (2014), her most recent hit was a Sean Roldan track in Suriya-starrer Jai Bhim. “The song spoke about positivity, and it resonated with me.”

She has worked with many established composers in the industry, but Vijayalakshmi has a dream: to sing for Ilaiyaraaja and AR Rahman someday. Currently, she has multiple film recordings lined up, apart from a few shows. She is also taking on a new avatar as music composer, in Malayalam film Oru Vattam Koodi, which has lyrics by Vinod. Her biggest learning in this journey? “Music is everything. That’s the only thing that will always be with me.”