A personal tribute to Lakshmi Shankar
By Kanniks Kannikeswaran

Several thoughts ran through my head. I was standing next to
a grand old lady just ten years younger than my grandmother. She was from the family of India’s best
known musician in the western hemisphere. Her name and voice had flashed
through the title-credits of the Academy Award winning film ‘Gandhi’ that I had
watched in India in awe in 1983. This lady was a conductor who had directed
some of Ravi Shankar’s ensembles and had worked with George Harrison and
others. She was a Hindustani musician with an array of recordings and concerts
and a large fan following, a Carnatic musician, a polyglot, an accomplished
dancer and more. She had interacted
with such great personalities as Jawaharlal Nehru, S. Balachander, S. Rajam, MS
Subbulakshmi, Pandit Ratanjankar, Madan Mohan (composer of film music)– just to
name a few.
I woke up from my reverie, sang the song with her and ran
back to the control room to monitor the rest of the production. It was this
opportunity to collaborate with her that led to several musical sessions and
discussions with Lakshmi Shankar. It was during one such session that it
occurred to me that Lakshmi’s story needed to be told.
Some seven years after the thought first struck me, I spoke
with Sruti editor Ramnarayan regarding the idea and actually sat down to
compile the information that I had gleaned from her and documented during my
music lessons and long phone conversations with her.
Lakshmi Shankar first made a name for herself in
Bharatanatyam and contemporary classical Indian dance and on the tinsel screen
and then rose to great heights as a renowned Hindustani musician.
Lakshmi is held in high regard in Hindustani music circles
and has etched a name for herself in her own Patiala gharana-entrenched style
of raga exposition. Her solo discography is a long list of albums featuring
renditions in such ragas as dhani, jog and more as well as a litany of bhajans
tuned and rendered soulfully. In addition, Lakshmi specialises in thumris and
lighter compositions in various Indian languages. Yet, it is interesting to
note that her journey into the the music world began in the realm of Carnatic
music particularly with the music of Muthuswami Dikshitar.
I had been introduced to Lakshmi through her good friends
Sonal Sanghvi and Dr Vijay Sanghvi as their ‘beloved Guru’; I met her for the
first time in 1996 when she had attended the premiere of my choral musical
theater production ‘The Blue Jewel’ in Cincinnati. I even attempted to speak with her in Hindi, completely unaware
of her Tamil origins. It was at Sonalben’s daughter’s wedding in 2003 that she
complimented me on my Hindustani violin playing and spoke with me in Tamil,
even while being surrounded by Gujarati and Marathi speaking guests.
‘Tamizhlapesa chance kedacha vidamatten’, she had said with a grin, sitting in
the midst of her Hindustani music fans and students.
Lakshmi’s father RV Sastri hailed from Pudukkottai and was
an established lawyer in Madras. Her
mother Visalakshi was from Palakkad. Her sister is the well known danseuse
Kamala Sastri Chakravorty. TL Venkatrama Iyer, a friend of RV Sastri used to
make frequent stops at the house to teach Dikshitar’s compositions to
Visalakshi. The young Lakshmi grew up listening to these and could reproduce
everything that she heard.
She sang Tyagaraja palayasumam and Swaminatha
paripalayasumam in vilambakalam and exclaimed, ‘This is how TL VenkataramaIyer
used to sing them in the 1930s’. The cutcheri rendition of these compositions
had already been altered in Lakshmi’s early years. ‘There is absolutely no connection between how it is rendered now
and how I learned it’, she said. She further quoted her
mother’s words of condemnation of maestro GNB’s reduction of this
vilambakala kriti into a madhyamakala rendition with ‘odukkal’ that suited his
style. She went on to add
that her mother was a great admirer of Veena Dhanammal, and encouraged Brinda
and Mukta.
Lakshmi Shankar was conversant with several of Dikshitar’s
kritis; she referrred to the collection Swaminatha, Tyagarajapalaya, Sri
Sarasvati, Mamava Minakshi and Sri Kamalambike as the ‘pancharatna kritis’ of
Dikshitar (as told to her by TLV). She
recalled her mother learning Budhamasrayami, Brhaspate, some of the Navavarana
kritis, Varalakshmim (Saurashtram), Pahimam ratnachala and Kumaraswaminam from
TLV. ‘TLV did not have a great voice; he was not an expressive singer either.
But his repertoire was vast and he was greatly concerned about the compositions
and their lyrics. Amma used to learn from him and I would reproduce what she learned. In fact, I used to be able to reproduce anything I heard
during that stage. TLV was a close friend of my father’.
Lakshmi Shankar was always a living link between the
northern and southern Indian performance traditions. She sang in the southern idiom in the mega dance productions
staged by California-based Viji Prakash. She had enjoyed cutcheris in Madras
in her early years; GNB was the rage during her time; her mother was a fan of
Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer and she herself a fan of Madurai Mani Iyer. She
had great regard for Maharajapuram Santhanam in the 1980s, particularly for his
janaranjakatvam. 'I was completely knocked out by Santhanam’, she said.
She had great words of praise for contemporary vocalists TM Krishna and Sanjay
Subrahmanyan.
In her later years, Lakshmi Shankar was a regular visitor to
sabhas during the Chennai music season,
during her visits to Chennai in the winter months, when she stayed with
her sister Kamala in her flat in Indira Nagar. It was during one of these
concerts in Chennai that TM Krishna smiled at her from the dais and launched
into Hamsadhwani to render the bhajan ‘Jaya Jayati’ tuned and popularised by
her. ‘I was pleasantly surprised’, recounted Lakshmi of this experience. Jaya
Jayati – a delightful soundscape of lyrics in Hamsadhwani is just an example of
the numerous bhajans tuned, rendered and popularised by her. Lakshmi Shankar’s
Chennai visits ceased after her sister moved out of her flat into the outskirts
of Chennai.
Her Hindustani music concerts drew a wide range of
audiences. The Hindustani music community in Cincinnati used to invite her to
reside in the city and teach music to a number of her fans. Lakshmi Shankar
obliged generously, related personally with each of her students and her stays
here would conclude with her performance. Dr Vijay and Sonal Sanghvi were her
hosts during each of her visits. When Sonal Sanghvi succumbed young in 2004 to
cancer, Lakshmi Shankar was deeply saddened. ‘I have lost a daughter for a
second time’, she exclaimed.
Forgotten in the midst of her stature as an established
singer in the Hindustani idiom is the fact that she had been an accomplished
dancer in her early years. ‘I remember her prowess. Lakshmi was very talented’,
recollected S. Rajam in a conversation with me in July 2009, speaking of Balasaraswati and Lakshmi Shankar in the
same breath.
‘I had my arangetram in a blue satin salwar and kurta when I
was 11; I had a zari vest over it’, laughed Lakshmi Shankar as she recollected this experience from the 1930s. She went on to add that costumes were very
simple in those days; ‘Balasaraswati used to wear very simple costumes; now,
jewellery and costumes have come a very long way.”
After her arangetram she was invited by Uday Shankar to join
his Almora cultural centre, where her eyes were opened to a world of other
dance forms and to Uday’s borderless approach to ‘movement’. ‘My mother was
very progressive and she encouraged me to go to Almora; she even came with me’,
recollected Lakshmi. Those were some of her most memorable years.
Lakshmi married Rajendra Shankar, brother of Uday Shankar
and became a daughter in law of the Shankar family. She holds brother in law
Ravi Shankar in the highest regard as her ‘guru’ and a kindred soul.
Each night, the brothers and their wives would gather after
dinner to discuss the script, music and choreography/presentation of the
various acts of Jawaharlal Nehru’s book ‘The Discovery of India’. ‘Those were
some of the most magical moments’, recollected Lakshmi – of the creative energy
that would pour forth in those discussions. She played multiple roles in the
ballet and has the program notes from this production among treasured
possessions. Prime Minister Nehru witnessed one of these performances. During
the final performance, Lakshmi was diagnosed with pleurisy; she danced with a
raging fever and literally collapsed off stage.
She recovered from her illness, never to dance again.
If dance was one dimension of Lakshmi Shankar’s artistic
personality, acting in films was another. She played the role of Sant Tulsi
Das’s consort Ratna in the film Bhakta Tulsi Das. BS Ranga from Bangalore, a cameraman, raised
the finances to produce this picture; the financier was Tamilnadu Talkies
Soundararajan. Raja Iyengar (brother of BS Ranga) was to play the role of
Tulasidas. The original music director
of the film was S. Balachander. All four major ‘ratnas’ of Tulsidas were
recreated in Tamil by Papanasam Sivan and tuned as modern compositions. One of the songs sung by Lakshmi Shankar was
Karunanidhipol katchialippadum kapatanatakama. This song ended up
sounding very western. The producer did not like the compositions; he contacted
Anil Biswas to retune the compositions.
Lakshmi Shankar’s song came out as a 78 RPM record. Neither the film nor
the recordings are available now.
How did Lakshmi Shankar become a Hindustani musician?
Rendered unable to dance, Lakshmi Shankar in Bombay considered a
career in Carnatic music; however at the insistence of Ravishankar and film music director Madan
Mohan, she came under the tutelage of Ustad Abdul Rehman Khan. ‘When I met him,
I knew that I had found my guru’, she says. All that she learned for a whole
year, was raga Todi. All the way from sargam through paltas through alap, her
life was nothing other than the raga. It was the Ustad’s insistence that the
distinctions that she developed in Todi would extend to any raga that she sang.
Her mastery of the idiom grew, until the point where thanks to miscommunication
and gossip, the relationship with her guru soured. Prof BR Deodhar (a student
of Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande) offered to continue to teach her and she
developed her own signature style of singing – marked by an exceedingly sweet
and expressive voice.
‘For a South Indian trying to make a mark in Hindustani
music, the challenges were many’ recollects Lakshmi Shankar. ‘Mistakes would always
be spotted first’. It was over the years, that she gained a steady reputation
for her soulful rendition of bhajans, thumris and other compositions. She was
fluent in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali and other languages and her
renditions won her fans all over India.
Lakshmi Shankar regarded Ravi Shankar as a major musical
contributor to her life. ‘What has he not accomplished’? she asked. ‘He
completely captured the world by his music, whether it was classical or folk or
western or exploratory music. There was nothing that he left out. He was always
a pioneer in everything. Yet, he was very humble. No one knew
Carnatic music deeply as he did. He held
the pedagogical tradition in Carnatic music in the highest regard, especially
given the diversity in teaching techniques (across gharanas) in Hindustani
music. He however rued the lack of emphasis on voice culture in Carnatic
music’.
One of Lakshmi Shankar’s greatest adventures in music was
the ‘Music festival from India’ – a project conceived and executed by Ravi
Shankar and George Harrison. This project featured many stalwarts of Indian
music in their youth: HariprasadChaurasia, Shivkumar Sharma, L Subramanian,
Vijayashree, Kamala Chakravarti, TV Gopalakrishnan, Sultan Khan and Alla Rakha
– literally a who’s who of Indian music.
The principal sound engineer on the project was Kumar, Lakshmi Shankar’s
son. Lakshmi was the featured vocalist whose sublime voice covered three
octaves with ease. She was more than the featured vocalist on this project.
Rangasami Parthasarathi of Oriental Records spoke of the
manner in which Lakshmi Shankar served as the intermediary between the maestro
and the musicians in interpreting and teaching the music score. ‘Raviji used to
come up with ideas spontaneously and I used to notate them’, recollected
Lakshmi Shankar.
Indeed, when Ravi Shankar took ill during the tour, it was
Lakshmi Shankar who took over the responsibility of conducting this ensemble. A
photograph of all the participants decorates one of the walls in Lakshmi’s
beautiful Simi Valley home.
I enjoyed learning from Lakshmi. An electronic tanpura filled up her music room, where she sat on a divan. She launched into Jog, Dhani and
other ragas and explained their nuances. She emphasised the need to
start the alap in the tara sthayi if it preceded a bhajan.
‘It is a pukar,
you are crying out to the divine’, she illustrated. Her explanations were full
of narratives on the handling of various ragas by maestros and of her
encounters with various music personalities.
There was humour; there were many stories from the past. She
remembered Palghat Mani Iyer with fondness. He told her on one occasion that he
was going to play for DK Pattammal. ‘Pattamma, Dikshitar cutcheri izhukkum,
raattiri late aagum’, he joked. There were other humorous stories of the
struggles of a shehnai player in the Ravishankar ensemble. Then there were musicological references to the Adi Basant raga in the dhamar Khelat
Ghanshyam in the Music Festival project. There were references to the
musical genius of TV Gopalakrishnan.
She played to me an unpublished recording of a khayal (Sajanva) in Kedar
sung by her and TVG as part of Ravi Shankar’s project.
Her music was certainly not uni-dimensional. She recorded
for films. She sang for vaggeyakaras like Ratanjankar. As recently as Dec
2013, when I discussed the dhrupads of Swati Tirunal with her, in preparation
for my lecture demonstration at the Music Academy, she exclaimed, ‘Ratanjankar
tuned them all; he invited me to sing them’. She listened intently to my
singing the ragamala dhrupad and gave me a few suggestions.
To me, memories of working with her on my oratorio ‘Shanti –
A Journey of Peace’ are priceless. She travelled all the way from California to
Cincinnati at the age of 78 to sing for this production. A rousing ovation from
the 150-member choir greeted her as she came to see one of our rehearsals in
Cincinnati. I was amazed by her commitment to the project; I was thrilled at
her writing down the sargam and the lyrics in Tamil as I sang and demonstrated
them. She insisted on staying backstage
and singing seated on a chair. Her alap interspersed with the chants for peace
rang clear in the audience as the mixed choir sang my arrangement of the Shanti
Path from the Yajurveda. She was full of encouragement for the oratorio and
described it as ‘a breathtaking experience’.
I had invited her to the College Conservatory of Music to
have a dialogue with composition major students. In what turned out to be a
memorable session she talked in impeccable English of the recording experience
for the film ‘Gandhi’, her association with Ravi Shankar, George Harrison and
others (just a day before the premiere of Shanti in Cincinnati in 2004).
The human side of her was that of a full fledged Tamil speaking
grandmother . She insisted on spoonfeeding my four-year old daughter Sukhita
back in 2004. During Vinayaka Chaturthi in 2006, she served me kozhukkattais
she had personally made. She was full of warmth when our family visited her
home in 2008, when she introduced us to Sukanya Shankar and Ravi Shankar and
later on followed up with us to see how our visit to Raviji’s house went.
The childlike element in her was the most precious. I once
dropped her off at the Los Angeles airport and went to return a rented car
prior to boarding my flight. I went to check on her well being in her terminal,
knowing that there was a full hour left before her flight would depart. I
didn’t find her at the gate and was concerned. Soon enough I saw her saree clad
octogenarian form walking out of a nearby McDonalds; she gave me a mischievous
smile as I noticed her smacking her lips - an ice cream cone in her hand!
I had started writing this article a few months ago with the
idea of sharing it with her before getting it published. When I spoke with her
in early December she sounded unusually tired and even mentioned that she might
not be around for too long. Despite this hint, it was a shock to hear that she
had breathed her last on 30th December 2013, the very day that
Ramnarayan and I had had a conversation at the Music Academy canteen about her
and the need to write this article as soon as possible. Her end came before I
finished writing this.
It is unfortunate that apart from Gowri Ramnarayan’s article
and another story in India West, the media has not marked her passing with an
outpouring of reports. It is also unfortunate that the Government of India has
not honoured such a musical being with Padma and other awards. Lakshmi Shankar
did not care about all that. She was beyond awards and recognition.
What is the message from her that still resonates with me?
“God gives certain talents to some people; he also gives
them the opportunity to do big things. One should never miss out on these
opportunities”.
Lakshmi Shankar’s music lives through her recordings. I will
miss speaking with her in a mixture of English and Tamil and her jokes in Hindi
or Bengali, like one regarding the inadvertent presence of ‘Shri’ in
‘Puryadhanashri’ in the rendition of leading singers: ‘Puryadhanashri mein
‘Shri’ hai na?’ and above all her cheerful sprit and her warmth and blessings
during Vijaya Dasami each year.
A truly amazing personality! Indian Government has done total injustice by ignoring such a great artist! May her soul rest in peace!
ReplyDelete