Searchable Index — Musical Repertoire of M S Subbulakshmi
As R K Shriramkumar wrote “ Smt M S Subbulakshmi’s presence, contribution, and impact in society and the musical arena of our country in particular, stands unparalleled. The realm of Carnatic music has seen many a great musician. However, with the advent of MS Amma, as she was addressed, with reverential fondness, it crowned itself with a glory of becoming global. MS Amma dedicated her life and soul to the cause of preserving, propagating and promoting this beautiful art form in all its splendor.”
R K Shriramkumar was one of the first to document a comprehensive list of the composers whose songs M S Subbulakshmi had sung, in her trailblazing music career of over seven decades.
This searchable index has been created using Airtable. It is definitely just a start of trying to document M S Subbulakshmi’s vast and versatile repertoire that spans multiple genres, languages, ragas and composers. And, it is still a work in progress.
The sources are
- R K Shriramkumar’s starting list of composers
- Song lists from the MS family archives of Radha Viswanathan/V Shrinivasan and others
- Song lists from the hundreds of concerts of M S Subbulakshmi in Sangeethapriya.org (https://www.sangeethapriya.org/list_albums.php)
- MS Discography compiled by Navaneetha Krishnan
- Carnatic Collection (a compilation of carnatic music in youtube) : https://ramanarunachalam.github.io/Music/Carnatic/carnatic.html
- Youtube — Kavyavriksha playlist Concerts -M S Subbulakshmi
- Youtube — Kartheek Sharma channel and repertoire compilation
- MS Repertoire — Ragam Tanam Pallavis
Here are the links to the various Airtable views which enables a searchable index
- MS Repertoire — Grid of Songs (their genres, ragams, composers, language)
- By Genre (grouped by genre)
- By Ragam (grouped by ragam)
- By Composer (grouped by Composer)
The audio links for each song are continuing to be added.
When you view this on a larger screen (such as on a laptop or mobile tablet), the following filter capability is available. If you view this on a smaller mobile phone, Airtable just shows the list and you will need to click on a record to see additional details. The display by the different groups (genre, ragam, composer) are visible only on the larger screen.
You can filter by the various fields to search. For example, to search for songs in raga sankarabaranam,
- first click on the Filter icon, click on Add Condition and select Ragam in the pulldown list
2. Then, select sankarabaranam in the list of ragams displayed.
And it will look like this and also display, just the songs in Sankarabaranam
3. You can go back and select a different ragam to see songs in that ragam
4. You can also delete this filter by clicking on the highlighted delete icon to see all the records again or select a different criteria such as Composer or Language
