Birth
Ilaiyaraaja was born on 2nd June 1943 to Daniel Ramaswamy and Chinnathayammal in Pannaipuram in Theni District in Tamil Nadu. His mother Chinnathayammal was an expert in the Folk Songs.
Education
Ilaiyaraaja had learnt musical instruments from Dhanraj Master in 1968. He was the student of Dhanraj Master, who used to call him Raaja. Ilaiyaraaja had completed the musical course of Degree in Western Art Music. He had learnt the classical guitar via the distance learning channel from the Trinity College of Music in London and was a gold medalist in the classical guitar. He got the guidance for music composition from G.K.Venkatesh.
Personal Life and family
Ilaiyaraaja married Jeeva. His three children are Karthik Raja, Yuvan Shankar Raaja and Bhavatharini. His siblings were Pavalar Varadarajan, Gangai Amaran, Padmavathi Rajayya, Daniel Bhaskar and Kamalammal Rajayya.
Music Career of Ilaiyaraaja
Ilaiyaraaja joined in a musical troupe at the 14th age. His elder brother Pavalar Varadarajan was the head for that troupe. After his joining, for the next 10 years he gave his performance throughout the South India.
His first Tamil movie was Annakili in 1975, during which the Tamil Producer Panchu Arunachalam gave “Ilaiya” as prefix to his name. After which he was known as Ilaiyaraaja. Ilaiyaraaja used the modern techniques of the film music orchestration to Tamil film poetry and folk songs that was the fusion of the Tamil and Western idioms. His Tamil music in movies increased his influence in the Indian film industry.
He made the composition for the songs of Tamil lyricists Vaali, Kannadasan and Vairamuthu. He had also worked with other Indian lyricists like O.N.V.Kurup, Aacharya Aatreya, Sreekumaran Thampi, Chi.Udaya Shankar, Sirivennela Sitaramasastri and Gulzar. Ilaiyaraaja had done music compositions for the movies of Filmmakers like S.P.Muthuraman, Bharathiraja, Balu Mahendra, J.Mahendran K.Balachander, Mani Ratnam, Priyadarshan, Fazil, K.Viswanath, Vamsy, Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, Shankar Nag and Sathyan Anthikkad. He was the top Music Director in Tamil film Industry during the period of 1980.
Many singers like P.Susheela, T.M.Soundararajan, MG.Sreekumar S.Janaki, S.P.Balasubrahmanyam, K.J.Yesudas, Rajkumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Uma Ramanan, Jayachandran, S.P Sailaja, K.S.Chitra, Malaysia Vasudevan, Sujatha, Swarnalatha, Jency, Minmini, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Udit Narayan, Shreya Ghoshal, Hariharan and Sadhana Sargam had sung under the music composition of Ilaiyaraaja. He had sung nearly 400 songs in his own voice under his composition. He had written the lyrics for some of the Tamil songs.
Ilaiyaraaja’s other composition
The first non-film album of Ilaiyaraaja in 1986 was “How to Name It?”, which was the fusion of Carnatic and Western music. It was a dedication to Tyagaraja and J.S. Bach. His second non-film album was the “Nothing But Wind” in 1988, came with a concept that the music is the natural happening that connate to different forms of the air current.
His album “Guru Ramana Geetam” is a set of prayer songs on Hindu saint Ramana Maharshi in 2004. Ilaiyaraaja’s album “Thiruvasakam: A crossover” in 2005, is the collection of Tamil poems. Then the music album “The Music Messiah” in 2006 came under the composition of Ilaiyaraaja. Apart from these, he had given many albums with devotional songs.
Live Music performances of Ilaiyaraaja
He gives rare live music performances in stages. For the first time in the 25 years, he gave a live performance concert for four-hours at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai. This was held on 16th October 2005.
Ilaiyaraaja gave his first appearance in Canada on 16th February 2013 at the Rogers Centre. He made a live performance with his Orchestra on 11th August 2018, at the Hillsong Convention Center in Sydney. Later on 9th June 2019, Ilaiyaraaja gave a live concert in Coimbatore. In this program, the famous singers like SPB, Usha Utup, Mano, Haricharan and Madhu Balakrishnan gave their singing performance. Then the income of this concert was donated to the NGO organization “Peace for Children”.
Other works of Ilaiyaraaja
Ilaiyaraaja made the music composition for the documentary India 24 Hours in 1996. He is the only music composer to compose a song in the ascending notes as per his assertion. The well known cinematographer of Tamil Cinema Santosh Sivan says that Ilaiyaraaja had completed the composition for the soundtrack in the film Thalapathi within half a day. His music composition for 9 songs in 45 minutes made a world record, for the Director R.K.Selvamani’s 1992 film Chembaruthi. He gave the composition for the film Nayakan in 1987, which got a rank in the all-time 100 best movies by the Time’s magazine.
Records of Ilaiyaraaja
Ilaiyaraaja has made the composition for above 7000 songs, movie scores for above 1000 films and performances in 20,000 concerts. Ilaiyaraaja was elected as the all-time greatest movie- music Director of India in a poll that was conducted by CNN-IBN for the 100 years celebration of Indian Cinema.
The “Taste of Cinema”, an US based world Cinema portal , gave Ilaiyaraaja the 9th place in the list of 25 greatest movie composers in the Cinema History.He was the only Indian composer in that list. In an international poll of BBC, nearly a half-a-million people from the 165 countries gave their votes to the song “Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu”, which was the composition in his film Thalapathi in 1991. This song was chosen in the top 10 list of all time popular songs in the world.
His song Naanthaan Ungappanda from the movie “Ram Lakshman” was in the playlist for the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. Then the famous American singer Meek Mill gave a sample of Ilaiyaraaja’s famous songs for Indian Bounce.
Awards
In 2010, he won the third highest civilian honor Padma Bhusan from the Government of India. Later in 2016, he got the Jagjit Singh Memorial Award. In 2018, he won the India’s second-highest civilian award Padma Vibhusan. He won the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2012, which is an Indian recognition to the artist for their experimental and creative works in the field of music.