G. N. Balasubramaniam (1910-1965)
Gudalur Narayanaswamy Balasubramaniam (GNB) was born in Gudalur, a small village near Mayavaram in the erstwhile Tanjore district, India. He was the son of G. V. Narayanaswamy Iyer and Visalam Ammal. His father was a keen student of music. Throughout his younger years, he observed with utmost attention the techniques of the musicians of his day. Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar became his guru and inspiration. While his father dreamed of living in a villa at Luz Church road through GNB becoming a successful lawyer, the young musician in GNB made way for greater goals in life. He was also the first major Carnatic musician to moot the idea of Indian music as a single entity rather than separating it into Hindustani & Carnatic systems. He emphasized the richness of the composition with expansive improvisation passages.
His musical sensitivity was remarkably unusual and he had the rare ability to grasp swaras (musical notes) from even common speech by his friends and anybody, all of which accelerated his musical acumen very quickly.
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GNB was also one of the prominent composers of recent decades. Out of his 250 compositions in sanskrit, Telugu and Tamil in traditional and his own invented ragas like Chandrahasita, Sivasakti, Amrita Behag, etc., sixty had been published. A gentleman with humility as he was, he would not sing his own compositions in concerts. His respect for values was prodigious. He would return the nominal honoraria he got from the Music Academy as donation. A further feature of his concerts was that he would review the performances of his accompanists and his own. His joy would be immense at the excellence of others. He had a soft heart for rising artistes. His anxiety to satisfy the susceptibilities of the audience was immense.
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Till the end, he never believed in recommending his students, fans or even his own family members (siblings) for performing opportunities or for any other reason. He believed that the quality of the individual's music alone should recommend the artiste for his own progress. On another instant, he refused to give the college "donation" money of 2000 Rp, to his brother to get into B.A. (Hons) programme which he did not qualify on his own merit. To the dismay of his brother, he took up the B.A. programme as required. Before he passed on, he made a diktat that none of his family members should take up music as a profession as they would be compared to his legendary music & knowing the growing commercial politics & esotericism in the business of performing music, he feared they would be subjected to immense media scrutiny.
The zenith of his achievement was the division of the performing era of Carnatic music into two parts; the pre-G.N.B era and the post-G.N.B. era, an honour he alone received for his revolutionary services in the field of Indian classical music.
Biography adapted with gratitude from Aadishabdam: G.N.B, a blog by Harul Dass