Ilaiyaraaja nominated to Rajya Sabha: Here’s all about the ‘Isaignani’ and his musical life and career

Maestro Ilaiyaraaja has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha. The veteran music director has composed over 8,500 songs that have featured in close to 1,500 films across nine languages and performed over 20,000 concerts in his career spanning over five decades.’

Sending his congratulations for Ilaiyaraaja, PM Narendra Modi tweeted, “His works beautifully reflect many emotions. What is equally inspiring is his life journey- he rose from a humble background and achieved so much. Glad that he has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha.”

Ilaiyaaraja indeed enjoyed an illustrious career. Ilaiyaraaja is best known to Hindi music buffs for his work in Kamal Hassan, Sridevi-starrer Sadma. One of the songs, Ae Zindagi Galey Laga Le is considered among his best works.

But the maestro has many more laurels in his career. Oscar-winner AR Rahman started his career as an assistant to Ilayaraja. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London once performed a symphony crafted by him. He has bagged five National Film Awards so far: three for Best Music Direction and two for Best Background Score.

He has come a long way since his debut Tamil album Annakkili in 1976. Ilaiyaraaja composed Rakkamma Kaiyya Thattu for Mani Ratnam’s Rajinikanth-starrer Thalapathi. In 2002, it was voted the fourth most popular song ever in the world in a BBC poll.

From Nayakan’s haunting Thenpandi Cheemayile which he sang, to Agni Natchatriram’s Raja Rajadhi Raja in which he has used only percussion instruments, Ilaiyaraja’s innovations in popular music have been loved by critics and fans alike for almost five decades.

It is said that that filmmakers were so impressed with songs that they started commissioning films based on what they heard. About this, he told The Hindu in an interview, “Panchu (producer Panchu Arunachalam who was also a lyricist) had this habit of dropping in to hear my unused tracks and picking something he liked from it for his projects. He selected one of those six tunes and wanted that for a film that was being shot. I insisted that he give all six songs a listen; he loved them and said he’d make a storyline based on them.”

In 2010, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian honour in India and the Padma Vibhushan in 2018. Speaking about the art of composing music, he said at an event in 2010, “Mere keyboard playing is not composing music. When I did this background score (Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja), I envisioned each shot, the story and how it was going to be executed on screen and felt the music and situation. That is composing… when you create something, the feelings of the director should get translated into the music. This has happened in this (Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja).”

Ilaiyaraaja also collaborated with Netflix for a special theme for Stranger Things recently. He stays active on Twitter, interacting with his fans and even answering all their questions.