T. V. Rathinam

T. V. Rathinam
T. V. Rathinam in late 1940s
Background information
Birth name	Tenkasi Vallinayagam Rathinam
Born	c. 1930
Origin	Tenkasi, Madras Presidency, British India
Genres	Film music (playback singing), Indian classical music
Occupation(s)	Singer
Instruments	Vocalist

Tenkasi Vallinayagam Rathinam (Tamil: தென்காசி வள்ளிநாயகம் (டி.வி.) ரத்தினம்) (born c. 1929) hails from Tenkasi, Madras Presidency, British India. She was a playback singer for Tamil films.

Born in Tenkasi to Vallinayagam Pillai and Aavudai Ammal in 1929. Rathinam had learned music from the age of seven under a guru called Ramalinga Aachari, and gave her first full-fledged concert in Sri Lanka. She became a drama artiste and film artist as a child. Pursued her tutelage under Vidhwan Ramnad Krishnan at the age at 12 which paved way for playback singing later.

Married to Visvanathan Pillai in 1947.

Then she moved on to playback singing in the Tamil film industry.

She was 10 years old when she acted in Bhaktha Chetha in 1940 for the Madras United Artitstes. She then acted as the child Kannagi in Kannagi in 1942 for the Jupiter Pictures and also sang her own song. In the meantime, she had continued her training under Ramnad Krishnan, and later trained under Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar.

Rathinam was a much sought after singer in the late 1940s and 1950s. She became popular with the film music directors of that era who had worked with her repeatedly and in that glorious period TVR rendered a staggering variety of challenging songs.

Rathinam became famous by her songs in Miss Malini (1947) by the Gemini Studios. She also had a rare chance in Ponmudi (1950) by Modern Theatres when the music director the great G. Ramanathan had sung the songs by his composition, himself. He had chosen TVR to pair him as the female singer for him.

Many music directors gave her memorable songs, including S. Rajeswara Rao, Parur S. Anantharaman, M. D. Parthasarathi, C. R. Subburaman, K. V. Mahadevan, S. M. Subbaiah Naidu, G. Govindarajulu Naidu, T. G. Lingappa, G. Ramanathan, C. N. Pandurangan, S. V. Venkatraman, Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy, Ghantasala, C. S. Jayaraman, K. N. Dandayudhapani Pillai, S. Dakshinamurthi, T. R. Ramanathan, R. Sudharsanam, T. R. Pappa, N. S. Balakrishnan, Master Venu, T. Chalapathi Rao, P. Adinarayana Rao, Pendyala Nageswara Rao, M. S. Gnanamani, G. K. Venkatesh, V. Kumar, V. Dakshinamoorthy and Hindi film music director O. P. Nayyar.