Chennai: The 'nightingale' of Carnatic music, M S Subbulakshmi, who started her career by singing in temples, rose to become one of the best-known artistes in her field during her lifetime, enthralling audiences all over the world including the Carnegie Hall in London and at UN.

Born on September 16, 1916, she made her singing debut at the age of eight in Madurai. Initially she was trained by her mother Shanmugavadivu, a veena player. She went on to give concerts at Chennai, capturing what was till then a male bastion.

Coming to Chennai was a blessing in disguise for her, as she got a break in films, acting in many successful ones, including the all-time Indian classic, "Meera".

MS, as she was popularly known, immortalised many songs, including 'Vaishnava Janatho', a favourite of Mahatma Gandhi, Meera bhajans, Annamacharya kirtans and the like. Gandhi even asked her to sing in his prayer meetings at Sabarmati Ashram.

Her career touched its peak in 1966, when she was invited to render a concert before the General Assembly of the United Nations, where she kept the audience, comprising many heads of states, spellbound.

She had the rare privilege of rendering songs penned by the late Chandrasekerandra Saraswathi, the 69th pontiff of the Kanchi Sankara Mutt and the first and last Indian Governor General of India, C Rajagopalachari, praying for world peace.

MS also rendered concerts across the globe, including the UK, erstwhile USSR, the USA and France.

From her formative years, MS worked hard to perfect her diction, understood the inner meaning of the composition and spent months memorising Sanskrit texts.

Even in her seventies, she learnt new songs and recorded them.

"Music is an ocean and I am a student. For a vocalist, voice practice is important. It has been my habit to learn the meaning of songs I have to sing and the correct pronunciation of each word...", she once wrote in a magazine, when she was 73.

A Magsaysay award winner, MS donated her entire prize money to several welfare schemes.

The quality of MS' inestimable musical expression reminded one of the words of Congreve, a music critic, that "her music has the power to soothe the savage beast, soften the rocks and bend a knotted tree."

The core of classical Carnatic music is devotion. Without any contradiction, it is the easiest path to lead a life of detachment, without being a slave to material and terrestrial needs. MS lived such a life with the motto of earn to give.

In 1941, she and her husband, T Sadasivam, a freedom fighter who played a major role in shaping her career, met Mahatma Gandhi at Wardha Ashram. Three years later, she gave five concerts to raise funds for the Kasturba memorial trust.

In 1947, she rendered a concert on All India Radio on the occasion of Gandhiji's birthday on October 2, during which she sang her famous Meera Bhajans and Thulasidas, Kabirdas kirtans.

She stopped singing after her husband's death a few years back.

The nation's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, was conferred on her in 1996. She is the only Carnatic musician to have received the award so far.