Vamanan
One almost cannot believe that P.Muthukumarasamy is no more. While the English media all but ignored the passing of this Tamil music exponent who was an inexhaustible repository of classical Tamil song, even the Tamil publications reported it only in fits and starts….as if by word of mouth! Muthukumarasamy for sure was no media savvy singing star, nor was he a showman on the cutcheri platform though a few would critique his style as leaning more to evocativeness than classicism! But the fact that a society which hypes up any Tamil cause has more or less turned a deaf ear to an unrivalled champion of Tamil song shows how hollow its slogans are!
Muthukumarasamy was a musician and music guru with a difference. Totally unassuming in character, he was there for every student who cared to learn, and tried to musically educate students of differing calibre. He himself had benefited from the economical fees that Annamalai University charged him for the Sangeetha Bhushanam course back in the 1950s, and when it came to teaching or performing, the thought of remuneration never crossed his mind! Surely a different breed from musicians who weigh their songs in notes and dollars!
In the case of Muthukumarasamy, you never knew which was sweeter, his musical song or affable temperament! Mild mannered and amiable, but resolute in his objective of learning more and more worthy Tamil songs, he retained his musical voice all through and performed with elan even in his eighties! In the past few decades, he had caught the public eye as a disciple of the golden-voiced, seminal Tamil Isai singer , M.M.Dandapani Desikar , celebrating the latter’s musical oeuvre through an annual event. He was a good writer too and published his reminiscences recalling hitherto unknown aspects of Desikar’s career. In recent years, Muthukumarasamy popularized Desikar’s nine compositions on Madurai Meenakshi Amman. He also brought out a quarterly music journal, ‘Isai Yedu’, containing rare essays of archival value.
Born in Yaazhpanam (Jaffna) to Rathinam Ammal and Paramasami , a gurukkal in the Kandasami temple at Nallur, the seven-year-old Muthukumarasamy saw his life swing from plenty to poverty when his father suddenly passed away. Though he had the support of the members of the extended family, bereavements stalked him and his youthful years in Yaazhpanam were marked by perennial struggle as well as the dawning of musical consciousness.
Under such circumstances, he arrived rather late at the age of 26 for his climacteric training in the Annamalai University, but the four years there were a golden period under musical heavyweights of every hue. However, it was the music and personality of the redoubtable Desikar that fired his imagination. Muthukumarasamy would recall that an abiding master-disciple kinship started with a trenchant incident in class when Desikar harshly chided him for not being able to repeat a particularly difficult musical phrase. The student was devastated but the teacher made up so generously to him that a strong relationship flowered between them.
Returning to the island nation, Muthukumarasamy made a successful career as a music teacher in schools and also performed regularly over radio. The ethnic strife in Sri Lanka forced him to shift to Chennai with his family in 1986. After all, he originally belonged to a family from Kanchipuram that had settled in Yazhpaanam. The Chennai chapter of his life helped Muthukumarasamy make a splash during the December season of 2008, marking Dandapani Desikar’s centenary through thematic cutcheris in many sabhas. He also repaid his debt to his alma mater, Annamalai University, by teaching at the Rajah Annamalai Mandram’s music college in Chennai. The impression he made at the Mandram can be gauged from the fact that H. Hariharasubramanian, his musical colleague at the college, celebrated his 80th birthday along with his students. The Mandram on its part, persisted with him as a teacher till he could make it to the college. After he retired from an active teaching career in 2017, Muthukumarasamy told me that he might teach Thevaram songs to children near the Kapaleeswarar temple. This project never took off.
Carnatic music singer Sudha Raghunathan. who learnt some special Tamil songs from Muthukumarasamy, told me that the present generation could take Muthukumarasamy as a model for guru bhakti, as his reverence and gratitude to Dandapani Desikar was exemplary. Muthukumarasamy’s willingness to share his knowledge also gained her respect. ‘’Whenever I wanted to learn a special Tamil song for any occasion, he would be there, come what may. I have never seen another musician as generous and as forthcoming in partaking his knowledge,’’ Sudha told me. Listening to her, one felt that though musical savants like Muthukumarasamy may not make a splash even after their passing, they will be the stuff of stories shared generation after generation.
(The writer is a historian of Tamil cinema and author).
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