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NOTES FROM BABU'S MUSIC DIARY
By Babu

Several people with initials have become greatest personalities. M.S. Subbulakshmi, M.S. Swaminathan are a few to mention and M.S. Viswanathan is one of such genious personalities.

If my remembrance is correct, MSV came to Tirunelveli for his stage performance on the last day of Exhibition and Mr. Arumugam, the then District collector of Tirunelveli was in the first row. In the middle of the programme, Mr Arumugam went up the stage and handed over a lyric written by him on Lord Muruga to MSV. MSV went through the song for a few moments, playing his fingers on his Harmonium for a moment, instantly gave instructions to his team and within minutes came a melody on Lord Muruga ! MSV sang the song himself with full accomplishment of his orchestra. This magic is unique to MSV and I don’t know whether any musician in the world has this capability. As Kavinger Vaali and many others who worked with MSV tell always “ Viswanathanin viralkalil Saraswathi Devi nardhanam purihiraal” (Goddess Saraswathi dances in the fingers of Viswanathan). Otherwise how it is possible to give many tunes for a lyric in each film, create more than 10000 songs and at the same time making each of them unique in its own way ! The next day Newspapers captioned the incident as “ Collectorin padalukku irandu nimidangalil mellisai manner mettu pottar!” (MSV tuned for Collector's song in two minutes!)

Several melodious songs of MSV will not fall into any specific Carnatic raga and many a times difficult to be found even by leading Carnatic musicians and Music Critics. We have to call them such as ‘Viswa Lahari’ , ‘Natha Lahari’ and so on. In short MSV deserves a place among ‘Sangeetha Mummoorthigal’ (Musical Trinity of Carnatic Music). Saint Thyagarajar, Muthuswamy Dikshidar and Muthiah Bhagavathar.

One more incidence to quote : Yuhi Sethu, a film actor and music lover, interviewed MSV for his TV show “Naiyandi Dharbar”. He narrated a situation of a poor women singing a Thaalaattu (Bed-time song) for her hungry child at a far off place and requested MSV to give a tune for this situation. MSV, as usual, came out with a tune instantly and Yuhi’s surprise (and ours too !) was boundless when he found this tune matching perfectly with a song composed by some music director in some corner of the world, which Yuhi played and demonstrated. MSV would never have known the existence of such a song but how could this happen ?

Only Goddess Saraswathi should answer this question !!

(More to come...)