Shoba Narayan

Yet, she still recorded the hymn, albeit many months later. When Gandhiji was assassinated years later, it was M S’s haunting voice singing “Hari tuma haro” that the nation heard again and again on national radio. Carnatic music connoisseurs frequently call her voice “divine” and still recall — with goose pimples, they say — a favorite moment in a concert. After her performance in Carnegie Hall in 1977, then-New York Times music critic John Rockwell hailed her as “India’s best woman singer.” Few Indians, if any, would dispute that claim, and some may even remove the female moniker. Rockwell himself said later in his review “It would be interesting to hear any male singer who is better.”

Born in 1916 in Madurai, a small but culturally rich town in South India, M S grew up surrounded by music. Her mother was a veena player (similar to a sitar), and her brother played the mridangam (Indian drum). M S herself would sit for hours strumming the tambura, which provides the tonal background for all Carnatic music, and practice matching her voice with the purity of the sound. Beautiful and talented, M S had many suitors. But when her mother tried to arrange a marriage for her, M S rejected the match and left her home for Madras city. She arrived in the middle of the night at the home of Thiagarajan Sadasivam, a maverick publisher and Congress party member. Recently separated from his wife and the father of two children, Sadasivam scandalised Madras society by taking M S into his house and later marrying her in 1940. They would remain married and intensely devoted to each other all their lives. — Beliefnet.com