Ilaiyaraaja
Ilaiyaraaja (born 2 June 1943 asGnanathesikan) is an Indian film composerwho works in the South Indian cinema, predominantly in Tamil since the mid 1970s. Regarded as the greatest Indian music composer, Ilaiyaraaja is also an instrumentalist, conductor, singer andsongwriter.[1] He has composed more than 6500 songs and provided film scores for more than 1000 films.[2][3] According to Achille Forler, member of The Indian Performing Right Society, the kind of stellar body of work that Ilaiyaraaja has created in the last 40 years should have placed him among the world’s Top 10 wealthiest composers, somewhere between Andrew Lloyd Webber ($1.2 billion) and Mick Jagger (over $300 million).[3][4]
Singers S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, K. S. Chithra and S. Janaki have sung most of their greatest hits in his music. He integrated folk with western classical music in Tamil cinema and introduced western musical sensibilities into the South Indian musical mainstream. Ilaiyaraja is also known for creating music by fusing symphonic orchestration with traditional Indian instrumentation, often performed by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. In 1993, he organised a full symphony performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and thus became the First Indian to compose a full symphony,[5] with Ravi Shankar being the only other Indian to do so. He is also the first Asian to compose a full symphony performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.[6] He has won five Indian National Film Awards (the highest film honor in India); three for Best Music Direction and two for Best Background Score.[7] In 2010 he has received the Padma Bhushan, awarded by the Government of Indiaand in 2018 he was presented the Padma Vibhushan award which is the second-highestcivilian award of the Republic of India.[8][9]
In the 2000s, he composed a variety of non-film music, including religious and devotional songs, an oratorio and world music. He is usually referred as Isaignani (Musical Genius), or as the Maestro.[10] Ilaiyaraja is a gold medalist in classical guitar from Trinity College of Music, London. In 2003, according to an international poll conducted by BBC, more than half-a million people from 165 countries voted his composition Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu from the 1991 film Thalapathi as the fourth in the world's top 10 most popular songs of all time.[11] He was also nominated in the Best Indian album Music Awards category[12] at US based Just Plain Folks Music Organization, which is the largest grassroots music organization in the world, and stood third for his "Music Journey: Live in Italy".[12] In 2012, he received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for his creative and experimental works in the music field.[13] In 2014, he has been chosen for his outstanding contribution to the Indian film music and was awarded the SIES Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswati National Eminence award.[14][15] In 2015, he was also honoured with the Centenary Award for lifetime achievement at the 46th International Film Festival of India(IFFI) at Panaji, Goa.[16] On December 31, 2015, he was nominated by the Kerala Government for Nishagandi Puraskaram, the top award conferred by the Kerala Government's Tourism Ministry, for his artistic excellence and contributions to the Indian film industry.[17]
In a poll conducted by CNN-IBN celebrating 100 years of Indian cinema in 2013, Ilaiyaraaja was voted as the all-time greatest film-music director of India with a maximum of 49%.[18]
Early life and family
Ilaiyaraaja was born as Gnanathesikan in 1943 in a normal middle-class family inPannaipuram, Theni district, Tamil Nadu, India.[19][20] When he joined school his father changed his name to "Rajaiya", but his village people used to call him "Raasayya".[21]Ilaiyaraaja joined Dhanraj Master as a student to learn musical instruments and the master renamed and called him just "Raaja".[22] In his first movie Annakili, Tamil film producer Panchu Arunachalam added "Ilaiya" (Ilaiya means younger in Tamil language) as a prefix in his name Raaja, and he named him as "Ilaiyaraaja", because in the 1970s there was one more music director A. M. Rajah who was a popular one.[23]
Ilaiyaraaja was married to Jeeva and the couple has three children—Karthik Raja, Yuvan Shankar Raja and Bhavatharini—all film composers and singers.[24][25] His wife Jeeva died on 31 October 2011.[26] Ilaiyaraaja has a brother; Gangai Amaran, who is also a music director and lyricist in the Tamil film industry.[27]
Early exposure to music
Ilaiyaraaja grew up in a rural area, exposed to a range of Tamil folk music.[28] At the age of 14, he joined a travelling musical troupe headed by his elder brother Pavalar Varadarajan, and spent the next decade performing throughout South India. While working with the troupe, he penned his first composition, a musical adaptation of an elegywritten by the Tamil poet laureateKannadasan for Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister.[29] In 1968, Ilaiyaraaja began a music course with Professor Dhanraj in Madras (now Chennai),[22] which included an overview of Western classical music, compositional training in techniques such ascounterpoint, and study in instrumental performance. Ilaiyaraaja specialized inclassical guitar and had taken a course in it at the Trinity College of Music, London.[30]
Session musician and film orchestrator
In the 1970s in Chennai, Ilaiyaraaja played guitar in a band-for-hire, and worked as asession guitarist, keyboardist, and organist for film music composers and directors such asSalil Chowdhury from West Bengal.[31][32][33][34] After being hired as the musical assistant to Kannada film composerG. K. Venkatesh, he worked on 200 film projects, mostly in Kannada cinema.[35] As G. K. Venkatesh's assistant, Ilaiyaraaja wouldorchestrate the melodic outlines developed by Venkatesh. During this period, Ilaiyaraaja also began writing his own scores. To hear his compositions, he would persuade Venkatesh's session musicians to play excerpts from his scores during their break times.
Film composer
In 1975, film producer Panchu Arunachalam commissioned him to compose the songs and film score for a Tamil-language film called Annakkili ("The Parrot").[36] For the soundtrack, Ilaiyaraaja applied the techniques of modern popular film music orchestration to Tamil folk poetry and folk song melodies, which created a fusion of Western and Tamil idioms.[37][38] Ilaiyaraaja's use of Tamil music in his film scores injected new influence into the Indian film score milieu.[39] By the mid-1980s Ilaiyaraaja was gaining increasing stature as a film composer and music director in the South Indian film industry.[40] He has worked with Indian poets and lyricists such asKannadasan, Vaali, Vairamuthu, O. N. V. Kurup, Sreekumaran Thampi, Veturi Sundararama Murthy, Aacharya Aatreya,Sirivennela Sitaramasastri, Chi. Udaya Shankar and Gulzar and is well known for his association with filmmakers such asBharathiraja, S. P. Muthuraman, J. Mahendran, Balu Mahendra, K. Balachander,Mani Ratnam, Sathyan Anthikkad,Priyadarshan, Fazil, Vamsy, K. Vishwanath,Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, Bala and R. Balki.
Impact and musical style
Ilaiyaraaja was one of the earliest Indian film composers to use Western classical music harmonies and string arrangements in Indian film music.[41] This allowed him to craft a rich tapestry of sounds for films, and his themes and background score gained notice and appreciation among Indian film audiences.[42]The range of expressive possibilities in Indian film music was broadened by Ilaiyaraaja's methodical approach to arranging, recording technique, and his drawing of ideas from a diversity of musical styles.[41]
According to musicologist P. Greene, Ilaiyaraaja's "deep understanding of so many different styles of music allowed him to create syncretic pieces of music combining very different musical idioms in unified, coherent musical statements".[40] Ilaiyaraaja has composed Indian film songs that amalgamated elements of genres such as Afro-tribal, bossa nova, dance music (e.g.,disco), doo-wop, flamenco, acoustic guitar-propelled Western folk, funk, Indian classical,Indian folk/traditional, jazz, march, pathos,pop, psychedelia and rock and roll.
By virtue of this variety and his intermingling of Western, Indian folk and Carnatic elements, Ilaiyaraaja's compositions appeal to the Indian rural dweller for its rhythmic folk qualities, the Indian classical music enthusiast for the employment of CarnaticRagas, and the urbanite for its modern, Western-music sound.[43] Ilaiyaraaja's sense of visualization for composing music is always to match up with the story line of the running movie and possibly by doing so, he creates the best experience for the audience to feel the emotions flavored through his musical score. He mastered this art of blending music to the narration, which very few others managed to adapt themselves over a longer time.[44]
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