churumuri records with regret the demise of D.K. Pattammal, the doyenne of Carnatic music, in Madras today, 16 July 2009. She was 90 years old.
Damal Krishnaswamy Pattammal overcame an orthodox upbringing, where she was not permitted to sing for friends or relatives, to become part of the Trinity of Carnatic classical music, together with M.S. Subbulakshmi and M.L. Vasantha Kumari.
Pattammal said in a 1999 interview that she was the first Brahmin to come on stage as a Carnatic singer, like Rukminidevi was for Bharatnatyam.
“I was 10 when my father’s friends approached him to let me sing for a gramophone record company. First, my father refused, fearing that the record will be played at all and sundry places. He did not want the works of great masters like Thyagaraja and Dikshitar and his daughter’s voice to he heard at such places. Then Dr. Srinivasan of Kancheepuram, who is my husband’s uncle (I was not married then), persuaded my father to let me sing. My school headmistress, Ammukutti–amma, also urged my father to let me accept the offer. After a lot of pressure from a number of his friends, my father finally agreed.”
Pattammal had a Mysore connection. Her son Laxman Kumar is married to Shanta, daughter of R.K. Pattabhi, brother of the novelist R.K. Narayan and cartoonist R.K. Laxman. Pattammal was a regular visitor to the family’s residence in Mysore, both in Lakshmipuram and Yadavagiri.
Link via Chetan Krishnaswamy
Read the Frontline interview
Also read: Can Carnatic music ever change the cheri pasangal?
Balamurali Krishna: ‘If it sounds good to your ear, it’s Carnatic music’
churumuri 
I saw this news first in Churumuri! Amazing and Shocking how the Northie dominated media ignores news about south Indian luminaries. :-(
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Now pattammal must be singing ‘Ranga Pura Vihara’ in Raga Brindavana Saranga to the Gods up there as we are left poorer here.
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oh god u r this much merciless taken away mss now have taken DKP also…???
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harkol,
Leave it sir, all they care is, lot of money sleaze.
May her soul rest in peace. She was truly a class apart. She was also the first female to probably sing songs with national fervor in concerts.
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RIP DKP! 2009 seems a very bad year for Karnataka sangeetha lovers. A few days back it was Palghat Raghu and now its DKP.
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a great soul for whose inspiring music i am grateful (and, to a smaller extent, to her granddaughter nithyashree mahadevan). rest in peace, paatti.
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Classic classical singing without lipstick, she looks so graceful even while singing.
Just like Bhimsen Joshi’s Dasavani, the trinity had cut an album containing Purandhara Dasa’s compositions, it’s quite famous, what’s its name?
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Does anyone know when her last live concert was?
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I am stunned and absolutely amazed that news of this great soul’s demise is scarcely reported anywhere. She was such a gifted musician and had such a shining personality. Where are all the tributes and remembrances in the Indian press?!! Are they all asleep? Shame! Shame!
Her music, just like MSS’s and MLV’s, will live forever.
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harkol..
please…shahid kapoor and priyanka chopra taking time off to celebrate birthdays is more important than this.
I get goose pimples listening to pattammal
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Amazingly enough, the Express had a teensy little box on this, about 10 lines in length.
I think there were about a dozen full pages in lavish color dedicated to someone else who died recently.
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http://www.raghuism.com/2009/07/damal-krishnaswamy-patammal.html
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We pay our tribute the legend. DKP Amar Rahe.
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Carnatic music could be said to have reached its heydays as a highly popular theme of public fare (unlike as a royal privilege before) at a time when DK Pattammal rose to shine in the star triad along with MS Subhalakshmi and ML Vasanthakumari. The socio-cultural milieu was just right for classical greats all over India, to present the best in our classical musical heritage not only on the concert circuits, but also through the then (technically) primitive cinema, drama and even through the nationalistic political platform of the then (original) Congress. In order to remain classical, Carnatic music though having sprung out of the precincts of royalty and landlords and tZamindars, was able to maintain a high level of purity with a soul-stirring mass appeal, without which the thronging of thousands in open grounds at many locations in the South. As we grieve in homage to a great singer on her passing into eternity, we also grieve over a certain unfortunate trend in our classical arts, especially in classical music: the steady erosion of the beauty of Carnatic music due to the excessive sense of hurry in presentation (probably due to crass commercialism, and thoughs of advance booking of engagements for the artists?). Another worrying trend is the practice of some classical singers being used to sing advertisement tunes for commercials, mostly in unclassical tunes, and vulgar and unmusical songs for the cinema – the defence of the artists being that they need to do this for money, and the argument, that even in the days of Carnatic music’s heyday, the musicians sang for the cinema.
This latter one is just not correct, since even film music until the 1960’s (together with the lyrics) was qualitiatively very meaningfully appealing WITH (not ‘without’) the essential classicism being preserved in the tunes.” This is one. There are one or two more such slips, but I do not have to spell out the corrections, leaving it well to the intelligence of the average reader.
Another worry is, while we talk so much of a rich potential of “demograhic dividends” in the form of our youth population of India being the maximum as a proportion in our population in the whole world, it must be apprciated that such youth fed constantly with an indigestible form of entertainment based on alien tunes and ideas, cannot in any way bring out their creative energies, but only keep sustaining it for a while, and premature ageing through consumption of its youthful energies.
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really we lost a great woman of all times
i really hate north dominated media that i cant even find this news in any channel
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BMK–
Classical music will never die off. That is the reason we should celebrate that MLV and DKP left great disciples behind them, unlike MSS. Just as felicitous is the fact that our too-many-to-name musicians to the North are making Karnataka heard everywhere.
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When I returned home from office this morning. My father told me D.K. Pattammal attained to god. It was a shocking news. We had 3 murthis Thyagaraja Swamigal, Shyama Shastri Swamigal and Purandaradas Swamigal. The same way we had Dr. M.S. Subbulakshmi, Dr. M.L. Vasanthakumari and Dr. D.K. Pattammal. Now no one is there. We lost the great divine musicians. There is no carnatic now even though there is a carnatic music but our divine gurus are not there. There’s nothing to say. So lets pray. Namah Shivaya.
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I think along with MS, MLV and Pattammal, Radha Jayalakshmi should also be given equal prominence and importance.
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i agree with venkat that i faced same situation i burst into tears when i found that heart breaking news really god is soo cruel to us
i feel that no body can equal her
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Similar sentiments echoed by Balbir Punj on how media ignored the passing away of another great Ustad Ali Akbar Khan…
http://voi.org/12jul2009/sourced/thepioneer/alienatingourownculture.html
Balbir K. Punj
”
Over the last 10 days, English dailies and many leading vernacular newspapers in the country have been devoting columns after columns to pop star Michael Jackson who recently passed away. About a fortnight ago, sarod maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan passed away in the US, a country he had migrated to some years ago. The Press here devoted just a few paragraphs to his demise. Even a memorial meeting that was organised in New Delhi in his remembrance and attended by several eminent artistes got desultory coverage. But on July 8, the same newspapers were giving prime space to Michael Jackson’s funeral. “
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