It all started with my mother Alamelu Viswanathan?s all-consuming passion for great music and great musicians. My mind is whirling with old memories, forgotten snatches of bold music, affectionate glances of a thin, bespectacled lady staying with her entourage in our three- storied house in Santhome. I remember Gangubais? stay in our house in the early fifties when I was hardly four or five. And her masculine voice, which had a deep bhava; my mother?s adulation and her frenetic ministrations in the kitchen for her ?musician friend? from Hubli intervening are thoughts of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan?s stay in our house and me sitting on ?his? lap and calling him ?Bhade? in a childish trill and he laughing at me while enjoying the Aloo sabji expertly turned out by my mother and Veena Balachander looking on and enjoying the scene.

Another memory is of DK Pattammal visiting our house and singing to my mother who would pass critical comments and help yet another ?dear? musician friend by giving her silk sarees and pearl necklaces to wear for her concerts. Kalki, the famous writer, wrote poems and set them to popular Hindustani bhajan tunes. The song Poonguyil in raga Kaphi was one such effort and I remember Pattammal singing it soulfully like all her other renderings.

Pattammal was given her first movie break (playback), by my uncle, director K Subramaniam, in his blockbuster nationalist movie Thyaga Bhoomi. It is very strange that both DK Pattammal ( 90) and Gangubai Hangal (96) passed away within a week of each other. I have known them and respected them as highly classical musicians, unswerving in their traditional outlook, sticking to slow meaningful unhurried music which would just grow on you and sober you down by the weight of classical music and its ultimate depth and bhava or feeling.

Listening to them always made one understand core values of both systems, the grand and slow khayal of the north and the chowka (slow tempo) music of the south. Both were never frivolous in approach and had masculine voices whereby they could really sing like male musicians, who anyway have the upper hand in music North or South.

Actually, both the grand old divas started out with thinner and sweeter voices but both had throat operations, which drastically changed their voices, and lowered their sruti or pitch to that of their male counterparts. Gangubai once commented on this ? ?Ah, now with this change of voice I can sing more like my Guru Sawai Gandharva.? She wanted to identify with him and his voice and style, which she preserved with care and diligence for posterity. When I once asked Pattammal about her voice, she felt she could sing more like her Guru Kancheepuram Nayana Pillai after undergoing her surgery. What a pity that we could not arrange a jugal bandhi between these two similar greats ? it would have been thrilling to say the least. But knowing them, I am certain that they would have declined and said the idea was too ?modern? for their traditional outlook.

Gangubai was from a lower caste family of the ?boat man? caste. Her lineage was also of traditional singing women who were known in that area as angavastrams, an euphemism for musical women who were taken on (and cast off) by Brahmins and other caste men, as easily as putting on an angavastram or upper cloth. Thus, she suffered indignities like being mocked as a gaanewali (singing girl) by passers by and urchins, enroute to her 30-kilometre trek to her Guru Sawai Gandharva?s house in Kundgol. She faced untold hardships and struggles to come up in life as a musician. Her mother was the songster Ambabai, who was a Carnatic singer. Her father was a Carnatic musician too. But being in an area where both musical styles merge , Gangubai opted for Hindustani and succeeded with hard work and sacrifice. The age-old stigma, like for the devadasis of the south was still there. Nearly 80 years ago, life for a lady musician was tough. Gangubai, however, fought her way up and sacrificed all for her large joint family whom she supported till the end. And it was for that family that she remained unmarried and urged her partner, father of her children, to marry and have his own family. Again old fashioned values based on faith and tolerance. Pattammal was the only Brahmin lady musician of her times, who hailed from a non-devadasi background. But music was in her and her brother DK Jayaraman?s genes too. She also fought orthodoxy, cut records for Columbia gramophone company and insisted on learning from Nayana Pillai, much to the opposition of her relatives. That is how she ended up learning from Pillai who also taught Brinda and Muktha, the talented grand-daughters of Veena Dhanam.

Pattammal?s family was quite poor but Patta sang her way through life. Writer Kalki was a major fan and a devoted patron who boosted her by writing padu pattamma in his magazine, with a play on the word paadu meaning both music and hard work. Pattammal had a number of gurus. She used to tell me about a mysterious ?telugu? teacher who taught her many kritis and rare songs and javalis. Whenever she mentioned TL Venkatrama Iyer, her guru for Dikshithar kritis, she used to be moved to tears, remembering his kindness and his vast knowledge. One incident she related was that during her Sangitha Kalanidhi (one of the highest honours musicians aspire for, bestowed by Chennai?s Music Academy) function she was very upset as he was then critically ill. She ran to his bedside immediately after, and only then did he breathe his last. Pattammal and Jayaraman kept alive the Dikshither tradition all their lives and taught many of us generously from their treasure chest of kritis. They both praised me a lot and trusted me with their rare songs, believing in my ability to keep the songs intact for posterity. They could not tolerate students who carelessly changed the traditions.

Whenever I have listened to Gangubai, I have felt a deep sadness reflected in her art. No doubt, her family, financial and gender struggles and her Guru?s style shaped her emotional music. She learnt also from Krishnacharya, Dattopant Desai, and Rambhau Kundgolkar. But eventually, like all great musicians, she formed an amalgam of all the styles and adhered to a passionate outflow which had a lot in common to Sawai Gandharava?s style. Bharat Ratna Bhimsen Joshi is her guru-bhai, the term used for a fellow-shishya who trained under the same Guru. Throughout her life, except for the latter part, Gangubai had problems of myriad types.When she received news of her Padma Vibhushan, sad as it may seem, she spent the whole night with her uncle and others, reliving all the hardships, ostracism and struggles of her life, unable to be happy even for a moment .

Pattammal had a better and happier family life. Coming from an ordinary traditional family she was fortunate that Eswaran, her husband supported her for decades. She was a trail-blazer of sorts. Taking on the conservative Brahmins by actually singing on stage for them, she started singing Ragam-thanam and pallavi usually a male bastion at that time. Pattammal?s boldness spawned erudite concerts by women , which happily continues till date. At the end of the day, as musicians, it would be an intelligent move to emulate these artistes of yore, pause for a moment to think about these traditionalists, ruminate about what made them tick, ask ourselves why they did not stray from the golden mien.

The answer lies in the fact that it would be better to honour and keep up the oral tradition of our music, passed on from generation to generation by the guru-shishya paramapara. It would be better for our conscience to keep the art alive with at least 90% of the semblance of the art which the guru gave us. For, this is what women of substance like Gangubai Hangal and D K Pattammal strived for, for almost a century. And this is what we should respect, and emulate, with salutations to these strong and talented divas of our undying music.

The writer is a Carnatic musician