Ragas and symphonies: Indian maestro Ilaiyaraaja is still reshaping music 50 years on
His ardent fans call him "the Maestro". Five decades after his debut, Ilaiyaraaja's music still echoes through homes, concert halls and cinema screens across India
His ardent fans call him "the Maestro". Five decades after his debut, Ilaiyaraaja's music still echoes through homes, concert halls and cinema screens across India. The 83-year-old composer from Tamil Nadu has scored more than 1,000 films in nine languages, a record unmatched in Indian cinema. He transformed the sound of Tamil film music with Annakili in 1976 and has gone on to become one of India's most influential composers.
"Ilaiyaraaja's arrival was a watershed moment. It was an intervention by a person from an entirely different social and aesthetic background who had imbued a distinct aural soundscape," says TM Krishna, a celebrated Carnatic musician. In India, playback singing is central to popular cinema: singers record songs that actors lip-sync on screen, while the composers usually also create the film's background score. Before Ilaiyaraaja, a lot of film music was rooted in Indian classical music.
Western symphonic influences were rarely woven into the mainstream soundtrack. But Ilaiyaraaja, Krishna says, drew on a wide range of musical traditions from around the world. "What's unique is that he creates a cohesiveness to all the different forms he's taken from different genres of music. That is the genius of Ilaiyaraja," he said. Following the success of Annakili, Ilaiyaraaja produced hits across languages, including Pathinaaru Vayathinile, Olangal, Sadma, Geetanjali, Chinna Gounder and Nayakan.
He has composed more than 8,000 film songs, drawing heavily on Tamil Nadu's folk and rural ballad traditions. Last year, he became the first Indian to compose and perform a Western classical symphony in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which described it as a "milestone in global music history".
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