Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi ( ), popularly known as M.S. or M.S.S.) (September 16, 1916 - December 11, 2004) was a renowned Carnatic vocalist. She was the first musician ever to be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnataka/Carnatic_music.

M.S.Subbulakhsmi was born on 16 Sep,1916 in a musical family, in the temple town of Madurai situated in the state of Tamil Nadu in South India. M.S. started learning Carnatic music from a very early age and released her first recording at the age of 10. She then began her Carnatic classical music training under Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer and then Hindustani classical training under Pandit Narayan Rao Vyas. Her first public performance was during the Mahamaham festival at Kumbakonam. Then, she performed countless musical forms in different languages such as Hindi, Bengali , Gujarati , Marathi, Tamil , Malayalam, Telugu , Sanskrit and Kannada.

M.S. met T.Sadasivam|Sadasivam, a freedom fighter, and a follower of Rajaji, in 1936. She married him in 1940 and their marriage spanned over 50 years. They had no children. Sadasivam had children from his previous marriage that M.S. treated as if they were her own children. They were named Radha, Vijaya. M.S and Sadasivam also raised Radha who frequently sang with M.S. in concert while Vijaya played the Tanpura.

Subbulakshmi had participated in music concerts all over the world,but her participation in the concerts at New York in 1970,London in 1982 and Moscow in 1987 had a special significance in her life.17 January,2001 was a very important day in karnatak classical music when M.S.Subbulakshmi was given a national award by Ramaseva Mandal in bangaluru.She was the first woman who recived this prestigious award