Meeting with Ilaiyaraaja - Part 3

A couple of corrections/omissions to my earlier blog about my meeting with Ilaiyaraja. My meeting with IR was from 20:30 to 22:15 and not 20:30 to 21:15. The song that was playing on my car as we got into it was “Aali pazham perukkaan” from My dear kuttichaathaan (the tamil version goes “Chella kuzhandhaigaley”)

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It was IR who began the conversation asking me “Neengal Malayalam paattai virumbi kaetpeengala?” (Do you listen to Malayalam songs?) when I replied, “Saar neenga endha mozhiyila paattu poattaalum naan adhai kaetpaen” (Sir, I will listen to a song in any language if it were composed by you). And so saying I fiddled my CD player to go to the “Women in turmoil” playlist. Rest in the first blog. Now to part 3.

When we drove back home, I took the car inside his house, dropped IR and Ravi at the portico and parked my car outside his residence and walked back in. IR’s house is very reflective of his personality. The color of his house is, White. All his cars are white in color. As you enter the house, to the left is the security-room where there is provision for the security to live 24*7 and a place to store the large-back-up power unit. The drive way is an arc (quarter of an arc) leading to a veranda which opens into a big visiting hall. The visitor’s room (hall) leads to the bigger house through a passage-way which resembles a vestibule. The hall has a double-ceiling. It has a 2 + 3 + 2 sofa seater on the right side as you enter and a piano on the left-hand side. There is an ornate lamp near the piano.

There is a simplicity and calmness to the overall ambience in the room which I guess very much suits to IR’s overall taste and preference. As we plonked ourselves into the sofa, my friend Ravi graciously asked me to sit near IR. So IR was seated on the 2-seater while I was seated on the 3-seater, the one closer to IR. I told IR, I was really lost on what to gift him and when I looked around, the best I could do find was an old book on counterpoint that I had bought in a Border’s shop in Milpitas in 2002. He perused through the book very quickly and mentioned that most of it was modal counterpoint. I mentioned IR’s songs were themselves a textbook on counterpoint (Sundari neeyum). I briefly mentioned Palestrina (Bach’s predecessor when it comes to counterpoint) and his music but this didn’t catch IR’s attention as he was busily signing my books/photos CDs. The first book that he took for signing was ”Yaarukku raar ezhudhuvadhu”. To my horror, I discover a small dead-fly on the very first page. IR’s signed “Iraivanadi Ilaiyaraja” and remarked “Book release aana udaney vangiduveenga polirukku” (“Appears you buy the book as soon as it gets released” implying a question “whether I actually bothered to read?”. I do. I’ve read yaarukku yaar ezhuthuvadhu atleast twice). He autographed Naadha veliyiniley, Nyaanaganga and Venba nanmaalai. Then he signed my engagement photos, the ones where my wife and I would be posing with the folks who visited our engagement ceremony and in the backdrop there was IR’s black-and-white portrait. He jokingly mentioned, that he was present in my engagement ceremony in some form.
I remembered reading somewhere that his first public performance was in 1967 in Tiruverumbur, a place very close to where I grew up Ganesapuram (near BHEL township), Trichy, Tamilnadu. He mentioned that the place was right but I got the year wrong, it was 1960. Then I mentioned to him that we celebrated my dad’s sastiapthapoorthy (completion of 60 years) at Thirukkadayoor on 3rd May 2003. His eyes lighted up (IR’s sashtiapthpoorthy happened a week later in the same place). I told him I would have stayed back to attend if only I knew. Alas I was to learn of the function only the next week when my mother in law and numerous others enquired me if I had seen the pictures of the function on a Kumudham (a tamil weekly).

Next up was my 2 copies of the same CD. This is a rare CD, one where IR’s carnatic compositions were played by Mandolin U Srinivas. Whenever I’m discussing music with a carnatic music rasika, who tends to be dismissive of IR’s music, I use this CD as the trump card. If the discussion were to happen in my vehicle when we are listening to IR’s music then what follows is almost predictable. I change to some carnatic vocal music (acknowledging my yielding to their opinion), switch to a carnatic-instrumental track and then slowly to mandolin’s carnatic compositions before going to “this” CD. The listener will be appreciative of the music, while still trying to place the composition (they will be unsuccessful because this is not composed by any famous carnatic composer). However they will reconcile this unfamiliar feeling by telling themselves that “carnatic music is an ocean” and it is very difficult to get one’s arms around it. Now that they’ve resolved the “unfamiliar” feeling, they will begin to listen to the music and once they start enjoying, they’d be curious to know more about the song and invariably the discussion would veer to its composer, when I beamingly would announce “Ilaiyaraja”. Depending on the maturity of the listener the discussion can end in a bitter fight or self-deprecating humor. Whenever it ended acknowledging human fallibility, we would discuss how much we rely on form/reputation to form our opinions rather than possessing the abilities to come to our own conclusions.

I was surprised when IR mentioned that he himself didn’t possess a copy of this rare CD. I guess he mentioned it only because I gave him 2 copies (with different covers) to be autographed. I was more than happy to give him one of those copies . While on rare IR music, I quizzed him about his performance as a carnatic-cutcheri performer in narada gana sabha in 1995. I told him I don’t possess that CD, when he told me that he wasn’t very happy with that experiment. He mentioned carnatic singers practice for anywhere between 5 to 15 years before getting on stage and that he was in no shape, while being busy at his film-composing, to pull it off. My friend Ravi got a little worried that I might have accidentally touched a raw nerve. If I had, IR didn’t make it obvious, on the contrary he appeared disarmingly honest, objective and critical of what he considered a failed-attempt.

I wanted to tell him about an anecdote I had heard about IR’s breathtaking speed in absorbing a new musical idea and presenting it with his unmistakable artistic stamp. On one of my business-trips I was returning from SFO via Kuala-Lumpur and Flute-Ramani, his wife, the mridangist Srimushnam Raja Rao, violinist Vaithi were also on the same flight. While at the waiting room at our flight’s gate, I quickly struck up a conversation with Violin Vaithi and within 2 minutes had informed Violin Vaithi that I’m a die-hard IR fan. I paused for a breath and mentioned to IR that I usually establish my die-hard-IR-fan credentials in no time and indicate that the conversation was going to be IR-centric and can continue if they’re fine with it. IR guffawed and remarked “Mudhalleyey adhai solliduveenga?”.

Yes I do. A small digressio from Violin Vaithi here. I mentioned how there was a discussion with one my customer’s (a pretty famous music label company) I told him that the Indian music that was marketed outside India was Sitar by Ravishankar, Maayamalava gowlai and more recently A R Rahman. This is so ingrained in the foreign minds that whenever you see a BBC or a Discovery channel program about India, they will show the Taj Mahal and play Maayamalava gowlai on Sitar and utter the words “exotic India” that is has become such a clichéd phrase. So I played Kalyanam Vaibogam (not found in YouTube) from Naan Mahaanalla to my customer. The piano preludes are played at a breathtaking speed. I remarked to my customer that the prelude was Chopinesque and so saying played the song to him. After waiting for the Janaki sections to start, he said “The female vocal didn’t sound Chopinesque". And when I related that anecdote to IR, IR replied to me saying I should have asked my customer “Why does it have to sound Chopinesque (IR pronounced Chopin as shopaan which is the correct pronunciation). For once I saw some anger in IR. I later asked IR if he was the one who played the prelude piano for Kalyanam Vaibogam and he replied saying he didn’t remember but it was quite possible.


Violin Vaithi mentioned that he too was a fan or IR and that his guru was T V Gopalakrishnan (I remembered reading somewhere that IR learnt carnatic music from T V Gopalakrishnan). Violin Vaithi then went on to tell an anecdote on how once IR had learnt the ragam “Bilahari” from T V Gopalakrishnan and that very same evening had composed a song in the same ragam, recorded the song and sent a tape to T V Gopalakrishnan. When TVG listened to the song he was happy that he was guru to such a phenomenally talented composer, because he couldn’t really believe that a person who learnt the ragam so recently could do something like this. When I narrated this incident to IR, he said broadly the events were right but the specifics were wrong and then went to narrate it correctly himself. He said TVG and he were returning from Guruvayoor and on their way back TVG was humming “Dorakuna Ituvanti Seva” a carnatic song in Bilahari, not to be confused with another song with similar first-line in the movie Shankarabaranam



Listening to this song on the journey back IR asked TVG what was this song and picked/learned the nuances of Bilahari from TVG by just listening to him. That evening IR was composing a song for the movie Balanagamma (song not found in YouTube), a period movie with Sharath Babu and Sridevi in a vittalaachariar setting – 7 seas 7 mountains etc. Since the movie was a period movie he could afford to compose a purely classical number and he chose “Bilahari” for Koondhaliley megam vandhu. IR then went on to say, how that day’s recording was even more special, since Chembai Vaidyanatha Bagavathar’s daughter and son-in-law were also attending that recording session. IR mentioned once he finished composing the song, he and KJY went straight to the recording room where IR would do a first take and then Yesudas would learn the song that way and then sing for the final take. Chembai’s son-in-law asked TVG, are they already ready with the song and was Jesu singing already without any practice directly from the notations, when he heard IR do the first take (implying he couldn’t differentiate IR and Yesudas’ voice).

IR was glancing sideways at the book “Multiple facets of Madurai”. He asked me what that book was about. I explained to him that it was a simple coffee-table book about Madurai with fantastic line-sketches made by Devadoss. He quickly glanced thru the pictures and got very excited about seeing various landmark like Aanamalai, the school where Bharathiyaar studied etc that he recognized. I offered him the book if he liked to read it. I told him I had brought the book nly with the intent of explaining to him how we were planning to come up with a similar book on IR’s music.

I mentioned to IR that he had tried a lot of innovative experiments and many of these are unknown to us. He nodded in the affirmative and said, if no efforts are made to tell them, then they could get diluted. Boldened by his encouraging words, I went ahead and expanded my idea by illustrating a few songs. The first song is one that comes when a good-natured-brute gets married to the female protagonist. The heroine would have just convinced the hero that he should give up rowdyism, drinking etc and when he tries doing that he is beaten up by the same rowdies who used to fear him while he was active as a rowdy. Realising the incompleteness of her advice the heroine would say, that she didn't want the hero to be a rowdy-for-hire, but it is stupid to not defend oneself. The first interlude in the song will beautifully portray the mellowing influence of the heroine in the hero's life from the recent past of this newly married couple. The starting of the first interlude will depict the hero’s old ways, and the second piece will show the entry of the heroine into the hero’s life resulting in a brief conflict, before the mellowing and sobering influence of the heroine is felt with the resolution by the strings section of the orchestra towards the end of the first interlude. I was telling IR that his usage of strings was unusually sober in this song, as the situation demands, where his usual tendency is to run amok with violent energy whenever he writes the score for the strings. He was looking at me and smiling amusingly. The song is “Unnaithaaney” from Nallavanukku Nallavan.



Next up was a very simple song from the movie Thai Pongal. I was hoping to give him atleast one song that he doesn’t remember and this song was supposed to be one of my attempts. I was disappointed when he immediately remembered and recollected the song. The song is Pani vizhum poo nilavil. The simple innovation in this song is the aspect of the chords leading the melodic lines (where usual practice is to play the chords along with the melodic line or trail it). You can observe it when Malaysia sings arumbey, sengarumbey thruvai malarvaai theyn (it goes “chords arumbey, chords sengarumbey, chords tharuvaai malarvaai theyn chords”). I told IR might have done several such songs, but I wanted this book to focus on some of his more esoteric songs like “pani vizhum poo nilavil” for his die-hard fans like me.



I was asking IR if he had complete artistic freedom in the preludes/interludes “Saar idhellam unga saamrajyam dhaaney” when he replied “Aamaamaam adhula ellam yaarum onnum solla mudiyaadhu”. We discussed the difference between IR’s compositions and Jugalbandhi. How in a jugal bandhi the fusion of disparate genres of music was at a surface performance level. The focus is on improvisation and a form of question-and-answer rather than an organic synthesis of different genres of music that way IR composes. IR replied saying jugal bandhila eppadi onnu serum. Adhu thani thani yaa dhaan irukkum. IR’s approach to composition is very different. He is not one who adds layers and layers of music to his composition. The composition comes to him in one go and then he divides this composition into multiple tracks for the different instruments. He is more of a sculptor who sees a form in a monolith and goes about chiseling the unwanted rock to arrive at this sculpture. This explains Ilaiyaraja’s breathtaking composing speed. He has done 50 movies in a year several years on the trot in the eighties, where he composes 4-5 songs a movie the entire background score and all this on an average within a single week for a movie. He doesn’t take the help of another assistant music director for any section of his song and he is not merely a composer, but he is his arranger and conductor too.

At this point I told IR, that I had observed how some of the other lesser music directors would find it a struggle to compose interludes, since the interludes were purely musical and abstract in nature and demanded the highest skill in orchestration from music-composers. This difficulty made them resort to simple orchestration like arohanam/avarohanam (Sa ri ga ma pa da ni Sa, Sa ni da pa ma ga ri sa), but in the few times that IR decides to use an arohanam avarohanam in his interludes, what all pyrotechnics he will adopt to camouflage the arohanam/avarohanam. It might be a 2-and-a-half octave climb-up or climb-down (2nd interlude of Aayiram thaamarai



Or it will be the culmination of a really fantastic piece as in 2nd interlude of naan thedum sevvanthi poovidhu




I was telling him that many fans like me understood the internal standards that he had set for himself and how we was trying his best to maintain it. I mentioned that like a story teller can captivate the attention of the readers, IR had the ability to complement a visual story aurally, by virtue of his vidwat and that he had raised the bar of musical-compositions and that other music directors have to exceed this bar before they can be acknowledged as a maestro. Unfortunately in India innovations and experiments in music done done by composers like Ilaiyaraaja in movie music is never acknowledged in musical circles, which tends to give a lot more importance to the context (where and for what was the music created/played) rather than its context.

IR beckoned one of his stewards to serve us mango juice. At this point Karthik Raja, his wife and his 2 sons were taking leave from IR’s house. I smiled and so did Karthik Raja. Karthik Raja’s son then bade goodbye “Poren” to his thaatha. Poren is an inappropriate way to take leave (like alvidha in hindi, kabhi alvidha naa kehnaa). IR quickly asked his grandson to come to him and told him to say “goodbye” instead of poren. Next up was mannil indha kaadhalandri. I mentioned how many Tamil-film-audience was aware of the breathless song in Keladi Kanmani because it was marketed well in the movie



Same with Kaliavaaniyey from Sindhu Bhairavi, one where IR uses arohanam for progressing up-the-scale and make non-avarahanam quantum jumps down whenever descending down the scale



I recollected to him how he in a TV interview in 1991 had downplayed the significance of the breathless keladi kanmani by saying he had done similar things in the past too – Thamthana (observe how a song featuring 1 heroine has been sung by 2 female singers)



And kanmaniyey kaadhal enbathu (observe how IR simplifies the song to make it easier for the singers to sing it) '



By now it was getting really late 10:10 PM and IR was beginning to tire, but I can go on and on for days together. The next song I took up for discussion was a song which was a superhit in Tamilnadu. In this song again the innovation was never marketed in the movie or outside of it. However IR, given his strengths, had imposed a heavy artificial constraint for this song but had still managed to pull it off brilliantly. This is almost like making sambhar without salt. The best part is people feasting on the sambhar and saying how tasty. If only they knew this Sambhar was made without salt their appreciation for the chef’s greatness will become higher. The song is “Raaja raajadhi raajanindha raja” from Agni nakshatram. In this song IR stays away from all his favorite orchestra instruments and uses just voices and percussion instruments. If you go back and listen to the song, you will realize how limited (compared to his other rich interludes) the interludes are. Owing to a combination of our interlude-deafness, breathtaking photography by P C, choreography and Karthik’s zeitgeist role we lapped this song ad nauseum.

It was 10:15 now and I told IR that it was probably getting late for him and I won’t ever leave unless he asks me to get out (Neengalaa kazhuthai pidichu veliye thalra varaikkum naan inge dhaan iruppen). To conclude the book idea I told him how there were many books on good compositions in the western classical music and pointed out the book “Eternal Golden Braid” and its reference to the “Endlessly rising canon” by Johan Sebastian Bach . The trick in this piece in one where Bach manages to create a perception where the song’s pitch, after a roundtrip of counterpoint, is seen to return to the starting key, but in reality he has actually raised it by half a pitch



By executing several such round-trips it is possible to be rising endlessly by raising the pitch by a half-step for every round-trip while aurally the song appears to be on the same key/pitch. I told how IR had casually demonstrated a somewhat converse idea in an obscure movie for the song Nilavondru kanden from the movie Kai Rasikkaran. Here he manages to give a feeling of persistent climb while actually playing the same tune in the same pitch. There is a constant supply of energy and a feeling of exhilaration while listening to the prelude of the song



IR asked us to come back with a sample treatment for a few songs and meet him next week. He asked me if this better done in Chennai (suggesting he was more of a face-to-face person) and both Ravi and I jumped and said we will come to Madras whenever we need to meet. As I write this blog I realize IR is busy this weekend in Mumbai and our meeting has been postponed to sometime next week.