IlaiyaRaaja on music just based on Electronics:

 

Now using these electronic chips, people can compile music from already programmed music sequences. If I make a music using these chips, I cannot claim to be a composer, since; I have not given notes from my brain. A composer should create music from his brain.

 

We have to rely on our brain cells (organic chip), to create music. A composer should compose Music without any instrument. Giving compiled sequences of music to Orchestra is not needed. Writing score-sheets with the involvement of brain cells, is real music. They are the real composers.

 

Our ancestors lived in a society, where educational facilities were meager, but acquired great knowledge and used their brain for creation (in arts).  Now, with great educational facilities, we are on the other side.

 

Our ancestors didn’t have good medical facilities, but they managed live healthy. Now, with great advancement in medicine and provision of hospitals, we all live as patients ever.

 

Destroying an art which stimulates the brain cells, by compiling music for movements of the body and negative thoughts is not nice. It is the destruction of the natural divine vibrations of the universe. Music is spiritual and relates us to God. We should not destroy it.

 

IlaiyaRaaja

On her birthday, her friend has invited for a party. As she enters, the friend started singing. But, her husband has sent her a divorce notice on the same day. So this birthday song with these emotional content is expressing everything and also soothes her mind.

IlaiyaRaaja Recently during a function has uttered the following words:

There are 12 chromatic notes. (in one Octave)
But, in reality, there are 27 notes. Literature will say 24 notes. This include the notes beyond our aural threshold. So, the distance between each and every-note is negligible. And all notes join to produce a single musical vibration.

Similarly, there is no distance or difference among people of the world. All joined together represent a Single World.

(Some words have been changed to generalize the idea)
Akbar

Indian composer Ilaiyaraaja is a genius; how long can the West ignore him?

Most people would agree that John Williams is one of the greatest film music composers of all time. He is one of the few — maybe the only — who can blend the classical school of thought and render it relevant to a modern context. Although he grew up and lives in the US, he is talented enough to have found an admirer in someone like me who hails from India.

If I am to imagine a similar adulation interchanging the continents but the other way around, this time a westerner admiring an Indian composer, I have no problem in finding the subject. Ironically though, I may have a problem finding any admirers. The reasons for this peculiarity are many but the worthy contemporary from the East who could stand shoulder to shoulder with John Williams goes by the name of Ilaiyaraaja. The best kept secret of South of India, Ilaiyaraaja is idolized by the 200-odd million people from the region.

The objective of this article is not to promote the popularity of a man who himself shuns advertisement and leads a spiritual life. It’s more about alerting listeners across the world who appreciate good music to a hitherto unknown composer whose achievements are noteworthy by any yardstick.

Ilaiyaraaja is an unusual and extraordinary talent.

Unusual, because of his humble peasant background with no formal education in music that he plays. Unlike many classical composers who started early and were child prodigies, he was introduced to Western classical music as late as the age of 25. Yet his musical acumen is so sharp that in the decades that followed he took to it like a duck to water. He is a rare phenomenon in India, someone capable of writing the sheet music for each instrumental part just by imagining the final sound in mind. He is a visionary who has found common ground in various forms of music.

 

It’s an extraordinary talent because he has scored music for more than 840 movies and more than 5,000 original numbers. His prolific output of background scores becomes an even greater accomplishment when you realize that an average Indian movie lasts at least an hour longer than its Hollywood counterpart. At the peak of his career he was composing for about 40 movies a year. Yet the quality of his work remained above par with the films being critically acclaimed and a huge commercial success.

In his colorful and lively career of more than three decades he has produced a couple of experimental albums which combine eastern and western classical music (How to Name it, Nothing but Wind). He also earned the distinction of being the first Asian to be commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, and released an Oratorio which is a musical cross-over (Thiruvasagam in Oratario) with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. He still regularly employs the Budapest Symphony Orchestra for the scores of select movies (such as Guru, Hey Ram, Lajja and Nandhalala). He has also released an authentic south Indian carnatic classical album played by a notable mandolin artist.

 

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This talent is not widely known outside India primarily because of the domain in which he operates. About 99 percent of Ilaiyaraaja’s works are composed for films in regional languages such as Tamil and Telugu. Unlike Hollywood movies that have a worldwide reach, these movies are exclusively made for local audiences and are not marketed in regions outside South India. While the theme and content of these movies may not be appealing for people outside the region, it’s the technical wizardry in such movies, in the fields of music and photography, that are sadly deprived of the attention that they deserve.

The genre of fusion music is practiced world over, by simply mixing two types of music in their raw form. For so long, it has merely been an art of leveraging the beauty of two genres of music. As alluring and experimenting it may sound, it’s been a marriage of two liquids whose viscosity doesn’t match. If you switch off the track from one genre, the other half would still be distinctly classical of its own. This is the case with the previously well known collaborative efforts involving Indian and western music artists — such as L. Subramanian and Stephen Graphelli or Ravi Shankar’s experiments with George Harrison or Philip Glass.

It’s in this context that Ilaiyaraaja’s works scream for attention. He has the gift to understand the building blocks of each genre at its grassroots and he doesn’t produce a musical piece by stitching various genres together as such. Instead he interweaves a new fabric whose threads are assimilated at its genesis. Pick any random song of Ilaiyaraaja and you are bound to find a melody strictly based on the Indian raga system backed by a western classical string ensemble arranged in parts to a south Indian folk rhythm played by a North Indian classical Tabla complimented by a jazzy bass guitar arrangement. And for not one moment does any of it sound out of place.

 

Even though the musical forms of his songs are constrained by the pattern of Indian film songs in which vocal choruses and stanzas are presented with orchestrated preludes and interludes, he breaks free in his own style. He embellishes the vocal melody with meticulous bass guitar parts and imaginative chord progressions while he experiments in the interludes with western classical harmonies and counterpoints using a plethora of instruments without losing the color or the texture of the whole song.

I think it’s a fair and honest assessment of Ilaiyaraaja’s work that he has invented his own genre of music. But ironically this fact may explain his relative obscurity outside India, as his music cannot be pigeon-holed as Ethnic music or Fusion music. So unless the global musical fraternity comes forward with an open mind to unlock his huge potential, this treasure trove will continue to be hidden for years to come.

This is a Romantic Song. Not Much to say about this. IlaiyaRaaja's Music will do the rest.



This is also a romantic song. But It is very different. The Guy doesn't know how to write, but, he wants to write a letter to her lover. So, he asks his lover itself to write the letter. When he asks her to read the letter, she just sings the letter. At the End the Song turns out to be a lullaby.