- Lived:
- 1916–2004 · Madurai → Madras (Chennai) — and from a Madras concert platform, the world
- Field:
- Carnatic music — South India's classical vocal tradition — with the bhakti repertoire, the songs of the saint-poets, at its heart
- The Big Idea:
- She took a classical art that was being fenced in by pedigree and gatekeepers and gave it to an entire people — a voice so exact in pitch and so saturated in devotion that a temple hymn she recorded in 1963 still wakes South India every morning.
- In their words:
- "…the grace of the Almighty, who has chosen my humble self as a tool" — one of the very few things she ever said about her own gift; offstage, she almost never spoke of it at all.
- If you remember one thing:
- The daughter of a hereditary musicians' community that was being pushed out of music at the exact moment she rose became the most revered Indian musician of her century, the first musician ever awarded the Bharat Ratna — and gave nearly everything she earned away.