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The Madras recordings
S. MUTHIAH
The earliest recordings in South India, starting with Tamil, were made by William Darby and, two years later, by William Gaisberg. Their work reveals some fascinating details.
The first recording in Madras was made by Vaidyanadha Iyer of Tanjore in Tamil. He then proceeded to make several Telugu recordings.
Other male vocalists included Radhakrishnan Iyer of Tanjore, P.S. Krishna Iyer of Madras, Kumaraswami Bhaktar of Conjeevaram, T. Narayanaswami Iyer of Tanjore and N.S. Doraswamy Iyer of Tiruvady.
The first instrumentalist to be recorded was an uninitialled Narayanaswami Iyer of Pudukottai who played the violin and made several records.
T.V. Venkatasubba Iyer, a High Court vakil, recorded his recitations of the Gita in half a dozen matrices.
But the most interesting contribution from my point of view was by Vengopal Chari who made records for both Darby and the younger Gaisberg. He recorded in Tamil ‘Imitation of Birds’, ‘Imitation of a Jutka Driver’, ‘Imitation of a Passing Train’, ‘Various Kinds of Laughing’, and, most fascinatingly, ‘Country People Settling Fees with a Lawyer’, ‘Teaching a Dancing Girl Music’, and, believe it or not, ‘A Brahmin Going to a Dancing Girl’s House’! Chari had a clone by the time William Gaisberg arrived and Professor Naidu recorded, like Chari, various kinds of laughs, and police court, railway station, and Madras street scenes.
The first woman in India to make a recording was Gauhar Jan in Calcutta and she made records for all three recording engineers who came to India in the early 1900s. For Fred Gaisberg she recorded one song in ‘Madrasi’ and another in ‘Tailungi’. The first woman in South India to make a recording was Dhanakoti of Conjeevaram, who recorded her song in Telugu for Darby. She was followed by Salem Papa and then Godaveri and Ammakannu, both of them also from Salem. Then came ‘Miss Nagarathnam’ of Bangalore whose first recordings were all in Canarese; Nagarathnammal’s later recordings were in Tamil and Telugu and she recorded only for Darby. Recording only for William Gaisberg were Bhavani of Conjeevaram and Sivakalundo of Madras. The woman singer in the South who recorded the most was Godaveri, which makes me curious about her. I wonder if there’s more information about her somewhere.
After these early efforts, the floodgates of recordings in the South Indian languages were open – but mainly by foreign firms, the Gramophone Company being challenged by Nicole, Pathe, Neophone and Odeon. By 1905, the biggest retailer of records in the country was Valabhdas Lakhmidas of Calcutta’s Talking Machine and Indian Record Co., one of whose most successful branches was the Madras office.
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