Ilaiyaraaja

Ilaiyaraaja (born Gnanathesigan) is an Indian musician, composer, arranger, conductor, orchestrator, multi-instrumentalist, lyricist and playback singer popular for his works in Indian cinema, predominantly in Tamil in addition to Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi films. Regarded as one of the most prolific composers and arguably the best India has ever produced, in a career spanning over forty-nine years, he has composed over 8,600 songs, provided film scores for about 1,523 feature films in nine languages, and performed in over 20,000 concerts. He is nicknamed "Isaignani" (the musical sage) and is often referred to as "Maestro", the title conferred to him by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London.

Ilaiyaraaja was one of the first Indian film composers to use Western classical music harmonies and string arrangements in Indian film music, and is the first Indian, as well as Asian to compose, record, and perform live a full Western classical symphony. In 1986, he became the first Indian composer to record a soundtrack with computer for the film Vikram. He also composed and orchestrated Thiruvasagam in Symphony (2006) - the first Indian oratorio.

In 2013, when CNN-IBN conducted a poll to commemorate 100 years of Indian cinema, he secured 49% of the vote and was adjudged the country's greatest music composer. In 2014, the American world cinema portal "Taste of Cinema" placed him at 9th position in its list of 25 greatest film composers in the history of cinema. He is the only Indian on the list, appearing alongside Ennio Morricone, John Williams, and Jerry Goldsmith.

Ilaiyaraaja received several awards for his works throughout his career. In 2012, for his creative and experimental works in the field of music, he received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, the highest Indian recognition given to people in the field of performing arts. In 2010 he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian honour in India, and in 2018 the Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian award by the government of India. He is a nominated Member of Parliament in the Indian upper house Rajya Sabha since July 2022. A biographical film about his life titled "Ilaiyaraaja" was announced on 20 March 2024.

Ilaiyaraaja was born as Gnanathesigan in a Dalit family in Pannaipuram, at present-day Theni district in Tamil Nadu, India, on 3 June 1943. He however celebrates his birthday on 2 June to honour M. Karunanidhi whose birthdate also falls on 3 June. It was Karunanidhi who gave Ilaiyaraaja the title "Isaignani". At the time of joining school, his father, Daniel Ramasamy changed his name from Gnanathesigan to "Rajaiya", and the people in his village called him "Raasayya". When he joined Dhanraj Master as a student to learn musical instruments, the master changed his name to "Raja". While working for his first film Annakili (1976), Tamil film producer Panchu Arunachalam added the prefix "Ilaiya" (meaning 'younger' in Tamil) to the name "Raaja", and renamed him as "Ilaiyaraaja", as in the 1970s there was another popular music director with the same suffix, namely A. M. Rajah.

Ilaiyaraaja grew up in a rural area and was exposed to a range of Tamil folk music in his formative years. At the age of 14, he joined a travelling musical troupe named "Pavalar Brothers", headed by his elder brother Pavalar Varadharajan, and spent the next decade performing across South India. While working with the troupe, he penned his first composition, a musical adaptation of an elegy written by the Tamil poet laureate, Kannadasan, for India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. In the initial years he used to set tunes to the songs of his brother Pavalar Varadarajan, who was a communist in then undivided Communist Party of India. He later left to Madras (now Chennai) along with brother Bhaskar to learn Music, they had only four-hundred rupees, which their mother procured by selling off the home radio. They knew no one in the city and were confident to live off the payments they would receive by singing for people on the streets.

In Madras, he became a student of Master Dhanraj who nurtured his immense potential. Remembering his master, Ilaiyaraaja said, "My master’s tiny room was inhabited by Bach, Haydn, Brahms, Mozart and Beethoven. He trained me in classical music." Ilaiyaraaja emerged as the topper and a gold medalist in classical guitar after taking exam from the Trinity College of Music, London. He also learnt Carnatic music from T. V. Gopalakrishnan.

During the 1970s, Ilaiyaraaja played guitar in a band-for-hire, and worked as a session guitarist, keyboardist, and organist for film music composers and directors such as Salil Chowdhury from West Bengal. Chowdhury once remarked that "[Ilaiyaraaja] is going to become the best composer in India". "Our main guitarist in Madras is the best composer in India", he said. After being hired as musical assistant to Kannada film composer G. K. Venkatesh, he worked on 200 film projects, mostly in Kannada cinema. As Venkatesh's assistant, Ilaiyaraaja would orchestrate the melodic outlines developed by Venkatesh, and learn about composing under Venkatesh's guidance. During this period, Ilaiyaraaja also began to write his own scores. To listen to his compositions, he used to persuade Venkatesh's session musicians to play excerpts from his scores during their leisure times.