Ilaiyaraaja was born into a poor rural family in Pannaipuram, Theni district, Tamil Nadu, India. He was the third son of Ramaswamy and Chinnathayammal. Growing up in a farming area, Ilaiyaraaja was exposed to Tamil folk music, such as the songs sung by farmers working in the fields. His formative contact with music-making and performance came at the age of 14, when he joined a travelling musical troupe headed by his elder step-brother, Pavalar Varadarajan, who was a propaganda musician for the Communist Party of India. He journeyed through numerous villages, towns and cities in South India with his brothers for about ten years as one of the musical Pavalar Brothers. He first tried his hand at composing music during this period: he set to music an elegy written by the Tamil poet laureate Kannadasan for Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister.
Arriving in Madras (now Chennai) in 1968, Ilaiyaraaja enrolled under the tutelage of Dhanraj, a music teacher, as it became apparent that formal knowledge in music such as musical notation was vital for a professional music career. He was introduced to Western classical music during his training, and the music and compositional styles of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert, among others, were influences that would later become a motif in much of Ilaiyaraaja's compositions (such as the use of counterpoint). Ilaiyaraaja's classical music training culminated in him completing a course with a gold medal in classical guitar (higher local) with the Trinity College of Music, London.Career and music
In Chennai, Ilaiyaraaja worked in a band for hire involved in performing music for various stage shows and formal occasions. Ilaiyaraaja also worked as a session guitarist and keyboardist/organist for film music composers and directors such as Salil Chowdhury from West Bengal, who often recorded music in Madras.Later, he was hired as an assistant to the Kannada film composer G K Venkatesh, an event that marked his entry into film music composition and direction. He assisted this music director in 200 film projects, mostly in Kannada. During this stint, he learned the practical methods of orchestration, and would hone his compositional ability through frequent experiment accomplished by persuading session musicians to play, during their break times, the scores that he wrote.
Ilaiyaraaja's break as a full-fledged composer came in 1976, when film producer Panchu Arunachalam decided to commission him to compose the songs and film score for a Tamil-language film called Annakkili ('The Parrot'). The resulting soundtrack, together with others that quickly followed, earned Ilaiyaraaja recognition for his adaptation of Tamil folk poetry and music to popular film music orchestration. Ilaiyaraaja helped reinvigorate Tamil film music which, by the mid-1970s, was experiencing a stagnation of ideas. As demand mounted for his 'new' sound, Ilaiyaraaja emerged by the mid-1980s as the leading film composer and music director in the South Indian film industry. Besides Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada films, he has scored music for Hindi (or Bollywood) film productions such as Sadma (1983), Lajja (2001) and Cheeni Kum (2007). He has worked with noted Indian poets and lyricists such as Gulzar, Kannadasan, Vairamuthu and T.S. Rangarajan (Vaali),and film directors such as K. Balachander, K. Vishwanath, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao and Mani Ratnam.
Impact
Ilaiyaraaja and musicians during a recording sessionIlaiyaraaja's arrival onto the scene of film music composition in South India broke some new grounds in the industry. It saw increased efficiency in the film scoring process and a greater centralisation of expressive control in the hands of a musical director. The Indian filmmaker Mani Ratnam illustrates:Ilaiyaraaja was the first film composer to extensively employ within the Indian film music framework the harmonies and string arrangements intrinsic to Western classical music. This allowed him to craft a rich tapestry of sounds for films, and his themes and background score gained notice and appreciation amongst Indian film audiences. 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. 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". Ilaiyaraaja has composed Indian film songs that amalgamated elements of genres such as pop, acoustic guitar-driven Western folk, jazz, rock and roll, disco, funk, doo-wop, march, bossa nova, flamenco, pathos, native folk, Afro-tribal, and Indian classical. By virtue of this variety and his interfusion 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 Carnatic ragas, and the urbanite for its modern, Western-music sound
Accolades and notable worksIlaiyaraaja's composition Rakkama Kaiya Thattu from the movie Thalapathi (1991) was amongst the songs listed in a BBC World Top Ten music poll. He composed the music for Nayakan (1987), an Indian film ranked by TIME Magazine as one of the all-time 100 best movies, a number of India's official entries for the Oscars, such as Anjali (1990) and Hey Ram (2000), and for Indian art films such as Adoor Gopalakrishnan's FIPRESCI Prize-winning Nizhalkkuthu ('Shadow Kill') (2002). Ilaiyaraaja has composed music for events such as the 1996 Miss World beauty pageant that was held in Bangalore, India, and for a documentary called India 24 Hours (1996).Awards and honoursIlaiyaraaja has won the National Film Award for Best Music Direction for the films Saagara Sangamam (1984), Sindhu Bhairavi (1986) and Rudraveena (1989). He won the Gold Remi Award for Best Music Score jointly with film composer M. S. Viswanathan at the WorldFest-Houston Film Festival for the film Vishwa Thulasi (2005).
He was conferred the title Isaignani ('savant of music') in 1988 by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi and received the Kalaimamani Award, an annual award for excellence in the field of arts from the Government of the State of Tamil Nadu, India. He also received State Government Awards from the governments of Kerala (1995), Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh (The Lata Mangeshkar Award) (1998) for excellence in music.
He was conferred honorary doctorates by Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, India (Degree of Doctor of Letter (Honoris causa)) (March, 1994), the World University Round Table, Arizona, U.S.A. (Cultural Doctorate in Philosophy of Music) (April, 1994), and Madurai Kamarajar University, Tamil Nadu (Degree of Doctor of Letters) (1996). He received an Award of Appreciation from the Foundation and Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (1994), and later that year was presented with an honorary citizenship and key to the Teaneck township by Mr. John Abraham, Mayor of Teaneck, New Jersey, U.S.A
