Vijayalakshmi Navaneethakrishnan is a leading name when it comes to Tamil folk art and music. She has been a renowned teacher who retired as a professor from the Department of Folk Arts at the Madurai Kamaraj University. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2018 for her contributions towards Tamil arts through various channels. She has researched Tamil folk art for many years and has published 23 articles on folk art. She has explored her talents as a versatile folk musician and singer too. She popularized rural folk culture in urban spaces, too.
Vijayalakshmi Navaneethakrishnan – An Exponent of Tamil Folk Art and Music
Vijayalakshmi Navaneethakrishnan, with her husband
Professor Vijayalakshmi Navaneethakrishnan was born in Tamil Nadu on 27 January 1946. She was born to Ponnuswamy and Mookammal in Chinnasuraigayamapatti near Rajapalayam. Vijayalakshmi was drawn to music at a very young age and chose music over tailoring as an optional course at school. Both her grandmother and mother sang so well, and young Vijayalakshmi was drawn towards the music performing artists during the temple festivals.
After completing her education, she worked as a professor at the Centre for Folk Arts in the Department of Art History and Aesthetic Fine Arts, Madurai Kamaraj University for many decades.
Apart from research works and published books, she is familiar to Tamil small screen viewers through talk shows. She also talks about folk in radio programs and discussions. She was the first folk artist from Tamil Nadu to receive a PhD for her scholarly work in the field of folk art. She has also appeared in a few movies.
Alongside her husband, she conducted her researches
She is married to Dr M. Navaneethakrishnan, who is also a renowned folk artist and researcher, belonging to the same field. The couple conducted several years of research and study on Tamil folk music and dances, and she co-authored 11 books alongside her husband. The couple was instrumental in taking folk songs as an art form to the masses, including conducting stage performances in India and abroad. They are the first folk artists hailing from the state to perform in countries abroad.
They retired as professors in the Department of Folk Arts and Culture from the Madurai Kamaraj University, and they continued their research on folk arts and music even after retirement. They are focussing on publishing an encyclopaedia on Tamil folk art. Their main aim is to collect and preserve every bit of information related to Tamil folk. They have been doing it for a long time.
Their contributions also include more than 1000 recorded cassettes/albums on Tamil folk music. Apart from scripting and documenting the folk music, they also recorded songs in their own voices, without preparation. Songs like ‘Vellai Pillaiyaar,’ which was once sung in remote villages is now on the lips of urban people. This is how Vijayalakshmi took folk songs to every person in Tamil Nadu.
She rose to prominence in the 1990s. Vijayalakshmi Navaneethakrishnan believes that folk songs can portray a farmer’s life and be used as therapy in a few cases. Started performing in AIR and stage in the 1980s, then Chief Minister MGR gave her a blank cheque in the 1980s, which she returned.
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