![]() ![]() With no disrespect to Ilaiyaraaja’s predecessors, the music of that period was heavily influenced by the Carnatic canon, the soothing breeze of “light-classical” and eastern folk from the North that occasionally flowed courtesy Naushad Ali, Salil Choudhury and SD Burman. The world of South Indian film music pre-Ilaiyaraaja, was pretty much status-quo-ist. Joseph Schumpeter, the acclaimed Austrian political economist described originality as an act of creative destruction. Conformity meant following the crowd down conventional paths and maintenance of status quo. In trying to understand the pathways to achievement, psychologists found two distinct routes in conformity and originality. Often, the more honest directors did not even try to pretend. The story was just a filler of space between six or seven Ilaiyaraja songs it pretended to provide a context to the real hero that was his music. ![]() Film scripts were written for Ilaiyaraaja’s tunes. You’ll encounter Ilaiyaraaja’s music on the Tamil street as often as you would the logos of multinational electronics firms or road signs in Helvetica.Įver since Ilaiyaraaja started out as an independent composer with the film Annakkili in 1976 up until the mid 1990s, he was the most influential figure in Tamil cinema. Ilaiyaraaja’s music is to contemporary Tamil pop-culture what the typeface Helvetica is to modern global commercial design. Reminiscing about the experiences of working with Ilaiyaraaja and the backstories of the creation of his songs is now a full-blown content industry on YouTube and in assorted Tamil publications. Ilaiyaraaja playlists categorised by ragas, has sparked renewed interest in Carnatic classical music. ![]() Ilaiyaraaja has kicked up quite a storm recently asking such filmmakers to, quite rightly, pay him a royalty for such acts of pilferage. ![]() They simply use Ilaiyaraaja songs with the ruse that it’s a scene set in the 1980s or 1990s. Many Tamil filmmakers and music directors now don’t bother composing background score to fit the flow of narrative. Find yourself in the ecstasy or love, or the Mariana Trench of love failure? Come to me with a 100 GB storage device. Felling a bit Che Guevara-ey after a pink slip? Rouse yourself up for a bit of keyboard revolution with ‘Manidha Manidha’ from film ‘Kan Sivandhal Mann Sivakkum’. Starry-eyed job aspirant who’s got an interview call? Try ‘Madaithirandhu’ from film ‘Nizhalgal’. Mother sentiment? Have some of ‘Amma endrazhaikkadha’ from film ‘Mannan’. Indeed there are hundreds of Ilaiyaraaja classics for pretty much every human emotion. The most common description for quite a number of years, from his collaborators to ordinary listeners has been this: “Ilaaiyaraaja’s songs are markers of our life stages.” Tamils, often world beaters in the business of creating highly expressive and cheeky social media memes, have run out of superlatives when it comes to Ilaiyaraaja. It can be the most effective preserver of sanity in the searing heat. #ILAYARAJA AGE DRIVERS#In the mufossil buses of Tamil Nadu, drivers who double up as DJs pretend as if they do not know the existence of other music composers. Yet Ilaiyaraaja’s work far transcends its commercial success. His music was sufficient to turn adolescent male actors, who hadn’t yet invested in a full-fledged shaving kit into bankable stars overnight. Music-by-Ilaiyaraaja signaled greater capital safety than triple A rated financial investments. The little man from Pannaipuram, a village near Theni in Tamil Nadu, guaranteed supernormal returns for producers small and big of the kind even sovereign states cannot. In that era, Pongals, Tamil New Years and Diwalis with Ilaiyaraaja film releases in double digits weren’t one-offs but the norm. In the last three years, Ilaiyaraaja has in fact worked on more films, and has a stronger pipeline of projects than his son Yuvan Shankar Raja, also a popular a well-established contemporary composer in south India, younger to him by 36 years.įor much of the 1980s, Ilaiyaraja was the engine that powered the entire Tamil film industry. His output of nearly 7,000 songs for more than 1,000 films, scores of devotional music albums and hundreds of live performances is as likely to be equaled as Sir Don Bradman’s Test batting average. Ilaiyaraaja, who turns 76 on June 2, is not only India’s greatest film music composer but also the most prolific. ![]()
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