Subbu Arumugam

Subbu Arumugam

Padma Shree in 2021

Subbu Arumugam (born 1928) is an Indian musician, writer and Villupattu theatre art exponent. He has published 15 books containing Villu Pattu narratives, songs, short stories and novels such as Veera Pandia Kattabomman. Some of his published notable works are Noolaga Villisai, Ramayanam, and Villisai Mahabharatham.

He has produced many Villu Pattu audio-cassettes, videos, and devotional songs. Some of the other notable works include Kannile Nalla Gunam, a video on diabetic retinopathy, (produced by Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai) and Sattam, Sathyam, Samudhyam, a video on legal matters (Government of Tamil Nad). He has also written comedy tracks, dialogues and lyrics for various films in India.

He finished his studies from St. Xavier School of Palayamkottai and Tirunelveli Mantra Murthy High school. After that, he put in 3 years learning ‘Madurai Tamil Sangam’ in Tamil dialect. He received training in the Villu Paatu theatre art under A. Subbaiah Pillai, N. Krishna Pillai, and N. S. Krishnan. He has been performing Villu Paatu professionally for about 40 years from the 1930s up to the 1950s in various temples, schools, colleges, factories and corporate offices as well as over the broadcasting media. He succeeds in conducted thousands of programs in awareness topics such as patriotism, national programs, national devotion and social programs such as voter rights and managing self-defense. He assimilated from the domains of Tamil stage and film discourse, and political speech. Subbu Arumugam's craft is such an amazing crossover even inside his very own way of life it strikes as fairly incredible to order it as per a framework.

He was awarded the Kalaimamani title in 1975 by the Tamil Nadu Eyal Isai Nataka Manramfor for excellence in the field of art and literature. He was honored with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for his contribution to the practice of Villu Paatu.