AVM and Music are synonymous with each other. It all began in 1932 in the name of "Saraswathi Stores" which dealt exclusively with gramophone records. Apart from classical, devotional and instrumental music, AVM released popular folk songs. Every year AVM has the unique distinction of releasing vocal and instrumental songs sung by leading singers in the city. In its interest to popularize devotional and classical music, AVM started its own Audio division "AVM Audio" and then "AVM Muzik". Both Saraswathi stores and AVM Musik are owned by Bharath film distributors.
AVM also has the privilege of having associated itself with fascinating musicians such as D.K Pattammal, Semmamgudi, Balamurali Krishna, Maharajpuram Santhanam,T N Sesha Gopalan, Seerkazi Govindarajan, Sudha Raghunathan, L.Subramaniam, Srinivas etc.
History
AV. Meiyappan took over the agency for Columbia Records in 1928-29 from P. Orr & Sons and became the sole distributors in five Southern Districts of the then Madras Presidency. Within a short span 'COLUMBIA' became popular with their attractive repertoire rendering their masterpieces and this prompted him to expand the company.
On 9th September 1932, AV. Meiyappan established 'Saraswathi Stores' to manufacture and distribute the products for which he took the Odeon Agency from their parent Organization in Germany, and with an arrangement the records were pressed at Calcutta, in the Gramophone Co. factory. The Second World War brought about a fundamental change in the set up with Odeon being taken over by HMV and Saraswathi Stores becoming the headquarters for the whole of South India for HMV. AVM produced several Odeon records of Ariyakudi that were extremely popular. These included several Ariyakudi favourites like "Evarimata", "Elavatara" and "Dinamanivamsa".
AVM wanted to come up with a musical product other than classical Carnatic music in order to cater to a wider market and appeal to the music tastes of common folk. During its first year of operation in 1932, Saraswati Stores began a new musical craze when it produced a series of songs, which comically portrayed actual work songs that were commonly sung by labourers. The release of P. S. Sivabaghyam's recording of the 'Washerman's Song' (Vannan Vanthaney) and the 'Milkmaid Song' (Mathiehchiyatthilee) turned out to be a surprise hit with huge record sales. After this success, Saraswati Stores continued to produce numerous similar songs with P. S. Sivabaghyam, M. Saradambal (Tanjore) and several others throughout the early 1930s.
Concert as it is known today was the liking of scholars and courtesans in the early years. It was Sri AVM who brought a revolutionary change in transforming all the characteristics of dance, music, folk-lore Harikatha etc., into a widely popularizing media of gramophone records. Eminent musicians came to be widely known in every nook and corner of the world.
To cope with the demand of all sections of the people, a variety of records in classical, folk-songs, drama sets, comedy tracks, dialogue, song portions of films, devotional, religious and other interesting forms were released and Saraswathi Stores not only became a household name in India but stood as a pioneer and leader in the field of music. He has the credit of recording and popularizing many patriotic songs of Mahakavi Bharathiar at the time of the freedom movement.
