Ilayaraja & His BGMs - The Lion Roars again.....

57^th National awards were declared on 15.09.2010 without any controversy, well handled by veteran film maker Mr. Ramesh Sippy and his team.  As per the news reports a two tier approach was followed, i.e first filtration was made at State level committee and finally at National level wherein final authority is given to pick films which were skipped by State level, result two films were picked by National level committee one Marathi and Bengali which were not recommended by State committee, this system made the selection process air tight and no scope for any manipulation – All is well that ends  well.  Finally selection committee has forwarded their recommendations to Central government for further improvement of selection process.

Being a hardcore music buff, I felt happy for the new talent Amit Trivedi awarded Best Music Director for his score in “Dev-D’, Amit seems to be very promising, his scores are fresh and have a touch of native flavour especially North Indian Folk fused with techno tunes, ‘'Iktara' his recent composition from the film ‘Wake up Sid’ still plays in my sub-conscious mind, an excellent Sufi number with strains of Blues genre, especially the Guitar, a perfect stress reliever. 

For the first time in National film awards, a new category was introduced in Music section – “Best Background Score”, which I feel should have been introduced a long time ago for the good of Indian Film Music.  It seems that the Indian psyche is coming of age and the recognition that should have been bestowed to the talents around is now lamented - Better late than never, and the winner of this award was ‘Maestro Ilayaraja’,  for the Malayalam film 'Pazhasiraja''. Ilayaraja is regarded as one ofthe finest composers ever produced by India, Master and Commander of Music, be it an Indian classical music format or a Western Classical Music (WCM), his scores were trend setters.    Shantanu Moitra, Hindi / Bengali Music composer observes that even A R Rahman, one time keyboardist of Ilayaraja draws from him,  that is the impact of Ilayaraja’s Music, may be it’s the reason why Rahman in his first interview after winning Oscars when posed a question to comment on Ilayaraja, has rightly said ‘Ilayaraja and his music is above Oscars’.  Ilayaraja has many first to his credit; he was the first to introduce fusion of Tamil folk with Western Classical to Tamil film audience, promptly followed by music composers in S. India and later adapted by composers across and other side of Vindhyas, had the rare distinction of first Asian commissioned to compose a Symphony for ‘Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London’ .  One of the music technology vendors disclosed that he has two customers who always wanted to update technology in terms of music and sound, one is A R Rahman and the other one is Ilayaraja.  Raja toured Malaysia and Singapore in mid seventies and imported latest technology prevailed at that time and still does so, but the greatness of Raja is that he ‘never allowed music machines or software to dominate his music’, it is often said that while Raja controls the machines, it’s the machines that control others.

Background Music (BGM), is something that was non- existant in Indian Film Music upto early 70’s, though Naushad has done some good BGMs in Hindi, they are often considered as inspiration from the classics like Ben Hur, Ten Commandments etc., no footwork was ever done in Indian Film Music until the emergence of Ilayaraja, who emerged as a magician with his music wizardry for his first ever score ‘Anakkili’, Tamil flick in mid 70’s.  Songs were trend setters and people felt a kind of different music being played in between the scenes or sometimes mingled with the screenplay, that’s the beginning of a new dawn in Indian Film Music, a new kind of trend set by Maestro Ilayaraja, to enhance the scene, and the feel, Ilayaraja starting using a different kind of music with new sound in films as early as 1976, heralding the beginning of a new feature, ‘Background Music’ (BGM) introduced by Maestro in Indian cinema which was well received by professionals as well as common cine goers alike.

In India, BGM is still not perused as a feature which has potential to make a film successful even with a bad story or poor screenplay.  Very few composers do the job of BGM with perfection and Ilayaraja is considered as an authority in scoring BGMs apart from his melodies, a rare distinction achieved by any Indian Composer.  A R Rahman, once said that composing BGM for a film is tough job as it consumes time and needs utmost concentration above all reading the mind of director and audience.  Professionals in the field awes at the speed of Ilayaraja’s music direction for his assigned films, he has a record of completing 3 films in 5 days starting from scratch to BGM.   *Ace director Mani Rathnam says “Ilaiyaraja would look at the scene once, and immediately start giving notes to his assistants, as a bunch of musicians, hovering around him, would collect the notes for their instruments and go to their places... A director can be taken by surprise at the speed of events”…(* source:- Wikipedia) this quality of Ilayaraja composing at surprising speed had made him to score evergreen BGMs with ease, a quality rare to watch.  

Those were the good old days evergreen 80’s and nice 90’s, the time when IR was at his peak and some wonderful films by visionary directors like Balu Mahendra, Bharathiraja, Mani Rathnam, Vamsi, K. Vishwanath, Bharathan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, K. Balachander were making waves in Indian Cinema and IR with his experimental music tuning the best songs with everlasting BGMs were striking right through the heart of common man making him happy, I remember watching some movies number of times just for the sake of BGMs, films like Gitanjali, Anjali , Nayakan, Sagarasangamam, April 1^st Vidudala, Sitara, Rudraveena, Agni Nakshatram,Kalapaani (Malayalam), Guru (Malayalam), Hey Ram (Hindi), Lajja (Hindi)., Paa (Hindi) etc, these movies are just tip of an iceberg, that potrays the genius of IR.

Indian Government by introducing a separate award for ‘Best background score’ has done an wonderful effort which may pave way for the quality of Indian cinema especially,  we Indians believe that those music directors who do some good and peppy songs with the help of pre recorded or pre designed loops are great, but the things are quiet different in other part of the world cinema, a composer is considered great for the job he has done for a film’s background, hence the quality of their composition and the set of orchestration looks elegant and apt for the scene and screenplay.  In India such kind of elegance is seen in the compositions of Ilaiyaraja, talent compared to any greats of western world. 

Its the time for us to realize that,  to compete with World Cinema it is not song and dance that forms the part of Cinema,  but its the Background Music that creates the feel for the viewer and steer his  or her soul to be a part of the film, Ilayaraja has already showed this feat with his scores one such  film I love to watch only for BGM is Gitanjali  (Telugu)  composed by him way back in 1989.   With this award ..Maestro Ilayaraja leads another path breaking moment for Indian Film Music, its time for Indian Films to understand the importance of BGM, already recognized as a first class feature in Hollywood...

.....Maestro Ilayaraja has set another wake up call for entire Indian Film Industry.

....The Lion roars again