Janaki was so much in the thick of things that she had to pay taxes even in the very first year of her career. Soon news of the young Telugu girl with a yen for expressive singing and impressive diction, whatever the language is, began to make the rounds in Kodambakkam’s busy recording studios and production concerns. She married Chandrasekharam’s eldest son Ramprasad in 1956. It was through Chandrasekharam’s encouragement that the provincial girl flowered as a performer, and it was his contacts that brought her the initial film opportunities and entry into the prestigious AVM studio as staff artiste. Another formative influence on Janaki was that of V Chandrasekharam, a Maharashtrian who had settled in Nellore and mastered the art of quick change makeup to transform himself in front of audiences into personalities as varied as Gandhi, Nehru, Lincoln, Lenin and Ramakrishna. A soprano herself, no wonder Janaki found her archetype in the soaring sweetness of Lata Mangeshkar. "Lata’s voice was my guru," she would assert in her later years. But Paidiswamy’s life was cut short by a heart attack and Janaki returned to her radio. Carnatic music teacher Gadavalli Paidiswamy recognised her innate talent when he did not start her training through the usual swara exercises but with Thyagaraja’s masterpiece in Abheri, ‘Nagumomu’. Janaki’s uncanny gift for music was fuelled by the film songs she heard over the radio as a child in a sleepy hamlet in Guntur. For all her genius, she too needed preparation with age, she was finding the lower notes difficult to produce, and her finale needed finish. She had stayed in Mysore in a furnished apartment for about two months, leisurely rehearsing the 40 songs she had handpicked for her programme. At 79, Janaki would rather sit back and see the world pass by. Though she had made such an announcement last year too, the present concert meant her life had come full circle as she had performed in the same city in 1957, the year she made her debut as a playback singer. She recently announced at a live programme in Mysuru that it would be her swan song. Vamanan A marathon singer with an insatiable appetite for songs, S Janaki has finally said sayonara to singing.
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