For the most part, most of Raja’s folk tunes are Westernized (more on this later). Exceptions such as Vettalai Vettalai in Rosapoo Ravikkaikari do exist. He uses a lot of folk techniques, but he rarely renders them in their original format. Raja is folk composer fit for B-grade movies Raja has several masterpieces, but not all his compositions qualify. The word masterpiece is there for a reason – just because a piece comes from a master it does not become a masterpiece. He also will not encourage a whole bunch of ‘less talented’ singers for some of his otherwise good compositions. If everything went right and he was truly God, he would not have the cyclical ups and downs in his career.
#Ilayaraja instrumental music movie
He has his laundry list of screw ups and he has messed up with the leading lights of the movie business. In other words this is a paradigm shift from a chaotic music production process to an orderly well oiled machine. No sound is produced that is not written, even chorus is written and conducted, precision in timing is taken for granted today and singers just end up doing exactly what the composer is expecting. He is the only living musician who understands WCM and CCM so well that can effortlessly move from one to the other, without the listener being aware, honoring all the rules of both the systems.Īs someone who started off in an industry that was dominated by CCM, musicians who were not score sheet driven, voices not trained in the formal Western way, a system unfamiliar with multi-part music composition, Raja changed it all within a few years. There is nothing called Raja’s top 10 – the best you can get is Raja’s top 200!
And most composers can either get quality or quantity, not both. His success rate is definitely above 45% of the tunes he sets. In that year, he had at least 125 hit songs. This does not include discussions with directors to understand the script and story line. On an average of 3 days for per film BGM, you are already stacking another 150 days. At his peak, he delivered music for about 51 films in a year – that’s about 250 songs or at the rate of 2 songs a day, work of 125 days. No Indian musician has delivered so much quality despite being so prolific.
#Ilayaraja instrumental music trial
He does not even hum his tune, or play it on a keyboard or piano – just writes his music! This is music by design, not trial and error. I will cover some of his experiments in detail later with examples. However, Raja’s experiments are so varied, that no one qualifies to be even a distant second. He experiments with musical ideas from several forms of music all the time.
I will discuss this later in greater detail with examples. While most Indian film composers consider an interlude as ‘filler’, he has developed it into a super fine art. He is the best interlude composer that I have ever heard in Indian cinema. He is the fastest background music composer in the world. Next time when you watch a Bollywood movie, pay attention to the credits. Unlike Bollywood, where one person does melody composition, another does the arrangement, the third one does the orchestration (conducting). He is the first true and complete Indian music composer – he does melody composition (all MDs do that), he harmonizes the melody, arranges the instruments, orchestrates and finally mixes and records as well. No other Indian music composer has such a solid understanding of Music theory and especially Western Classical Music (WCM) theory. What is that Raja has done that no other Indian musician has, to qualify for being called a genius? Here are top 10 reasons.
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