There was something deeply haunting about S Janaki’s voice.
In a career spanning more than six decades, there was no genre she couldn’t pull off. The legendary playback singer passed away on July 11; she was 88. Much as it may sound like a cliché now, Janaki was versatile enough to make the very word seem inadequate.
She sang around 48,000 songs in more than 20 Indian languages, besides a few foreign languages. She won four National Film Awards and more than 30 State awards. But numbers could never explain the miracle that she was.
Janaki could sing like a child with as much ease as she could deliver a devotional song, a romantic melody, a melancholic number or simply one bubbling with carefree joy. In one stage performance, she could even be seen singing in a male voice alongside P Susheela.
Her voice lent itself effortlessly to the magic that only music is capable of creating.
Over an illustrious career that stretched across generations, Janaki forged some remarkable musical partnerships. She worked with composers from different eras. From AM Rajah in the 1950s to AR Rahman in the 1990s, her voice travelled across decades to soothe a million nights, brighten dull days, or simply keep company with someone sitting alone in a quiet corner of the world.
Her partnership with SP Balasubrahmanyam remains one of the finest collaborations Indian cinema has witnessed. Together, the two legends gave Indian cinema some of its most memorable songs. The duo recorded thousands of songs across all the south Indian languages. Several songs they had sung for Ilaiyaraaja went on to become superhits.
Their partnership began in 1969 with the Tamil film Kanni Penn and the iconic duet ‘Pournami nilavil’, and continued for nearly four decades.
As versatile as Janaki was, SPB possessed a rare ability to laugh in the middle of a song. He could slip a laugh into a peppy number or a romantic melody without making it sound forced. Those improvisations became one of his trademarks.
If there was one female counterpart who could pull off that laugh in a song with equal finesse and ease if not more, it was Janaki. The laugh is almost visible in her songs. It seemed to rise naturally from within the character.
Janaki could laugh, cry, smile with allure, pray with complete conviction, and breathe life into a song in a way perhaps no one else could.
There was something else she did like very few others.
Along with Swarnalatha, it was Janaki who gave voice to female desire in Tamil cinema. In a landscape where women’s desire rarely found open expression and was often considered taboo to become part of the story itself, songs stepped in to say what films could not.
If Janaki brought intimacy and passion in the duet ‘Naan pooveduthu’ (Naanum Oru Thozhilaali, 1986), her rendering of Ooru sanam thoongiduchu (Mella Thiranthathu Kadhavu, 1986) is an expression of female yearning and unrequited desire.
Her humming in such songs and in general perhaps deserves a separate piece by itself. It was not without reason that she was celebrated as the ‘Humming queen’.
That was also why Janaki ended up singing many of the songs for Silk Smitha. Song after song, they created magic. From ‘Adiye manam nilluna’ in Neengal Kettavai (1984) to ‘Nethu rathiri yamma’ in Sakalakala Vallavan (1982), from ‘Ponmeni uruguthe’ in Moondram Pirai (1982) to ‘Aadi maasa kaathadikka’ in Paayum Puli (1983), from ‘Adukku malligai’ in Thangamagan (1983) to ‘Thenuruthe’ in Vellai Pura Ondru (1984), Janaki allowed her voice to do what Smitha’s presence did on screen – exude playfulness and an irresistible charm that only they were capable of.
Together, Janaki’s voice and Silk Smitha’s screen presence gave female desire a language that was bold and uninhibited.
But Janaki did not, of course, stop with Silk Smitha. She did it for many heroines, including Ambika and Radha, and years later, for Preity Zinta in ‘Nenjinile’ in Uyire (1998). The years in between couldn’t wither the playfulness in her voice.
The celebrated singer had turned down the Padma Bhushan in 2013, calling it too little and too late for her achievements.
Few singers could make emotion sound so lived, so intimate, and so completely their own. Janaki was one of them.
Kavitha Muralidharan is a senior journalist based out of Tamil Nadu.
Views expressed are the author’s own.