The maestro is a talent that comes along once in the bluest of moons. My point is simply that his genius doesn’t need the negation of everyone who came before him.
June 2 came and went. And with the day, Ilaiyaraja’s birthday, a hundred tribute pieces came and went into the Internet’s memory. If someone from fifty years hence read what’s been written about the maestro, they’d think that, before him, there was no Indian film music worth a discussion. Shankar-Jaikishan never made songs with a symphonic sound. Salil Chaudhuri never got inspired by Western classical music, and he never made those fiendishly complex tunes that rose and dipped with all the “predictability” of a drunk weaving his way through a crowded street. RD Burman never employed scale changes in his melodies. And coming to Tamil film music, nobody basically did anything. Every song was set in a pure classical raga, until this great man came and broke those shackles. I’m not talking about blogs and discussion forums. That’s animated chatter, even if it’s often very informed chatter. That’s people talking about art in an adda. I’m talking about the more serious journalistic pieces.
Read the rest of this article here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/features/tamil-features/ilaiyaraajas-folk-music-and-a-brief-roadmap-of-its-predecessors-baradwaj-rangan/
Copyright ©2020 Film Companion.
Baradwaj Rangan 
Madan
June 8, 2020
I have very conflicted views on this.
One on the one hand, I can see how aficionados of pre-Raja music feel from a different vantage point: that of Hindi music pre and post RD Burman. I love RD’s work but I also love the work of the stalwarts who came before him and, in some cases, worked along side him (Jaidev on Gharaunda or Khaiyyam on Kabhi Kabhi/Umrao Jaan). I have always found it irritating how people completely dismiss the work of composers pre-RD (only SD is exempted because he is RD’s father, lol). I am not even talking about fan chatter on internet. Even Anirudha Bhatacharjee & Balaji Vittal’s well written musical bio of RDB has a very nasty intro about the music that preceded his time, as if it was down to RD to rescue Messrs Anirudha and Balaji from the parched desert that HFM was before his time. Wow, would have never guessed that with the presence of such stalwarts like SD, Salil, Naushad, SJ, LP, OPN, MM as well as so many wonderful lyricists including Shailendra, Sahir Ludhianvi, Hasrat, Shakeel Badayuni, Majrooh, Rajinder Kashin, Kaifi Azmi, etc. Oh yes, all that to be ignored for just RD-Gulzar and forget about even whatever Majrooh did for RD.
On the other hand, two things specific to the Raja epoch:
1) Raja’s music, while doubtless building on everything that came before it, WAS revolutionary. It’s like, nobody’s saying Elvis or Chuck Berry counted for nought. Beatles themselves admired both deeply. But Beatles being Beatles, they eclipsed the entirety of pop music and old fashioned ‘rock n roll’ that had come before them. There is no point in grumbling about why people only want to talk about the Beatles because that’s just how wondrous their music is. It’s the same with Raja. I didn’t even properly become a fan of his until I was, what, 14 or 15 and before that used to be more interested in the work of above mentioned Hindi stalwarts (I know, yellam ulta in my case). But once I started to get ‘it’, I just couldn’t stop obsessing over all his myriad innovations and creative choices that you’d need reams and reams of bandwidth to comprehensively cover. On the flipside, nobody talks about Umrao Jaan, Bazar, Arth or Ijazat when they talk about how barren the music scene in Hindi was when Rahman struck with Roja. There is always somebody making good work when somebody else comes along and revolutionizes the scene. How many Rahman fans acknowledge Raja properly when they talk about Roja and onwards, are we going to litigate that now?
2) While I have seen some Raja fans have this turn-up-my-nose attitude towards Rahman’s work, most of us do acknowledge and respect his work too whether or not we ‘like’ him as much as Raja. OTOH because MSV had a very long reign at the top in terms of numbers of years before Raja really displaced him, there are lots and lots of obnoxious MSV fans who simply don’t acknowledge Raja. And hey, I am not looking for acknowledgment, just stay in your lane as long as I stay in mine. Like in this FB group about Bombay, people were posting about old Hindi composers with black and white photographs as souvenirs and as I had just happened to come across a photo of Raja in Bombay, I posted it and wrote a tribute to his music. Lo and behold, an MSV fan came along for the sole purpose of complaining that I had said nothing about MSV and even mockingly (and wrongly) assumed I must have never heard his music. I was like, yeah, I have heard it and I still like Raja more, whatcha gonna do about that? This fan didn’t have a single word to say about Raja’s music except to compare it unfavourably to MSV. I am sorry but if you think you are on some ucchi where you can look down with somebody with a 1000 plus films, then please at least spare us the headweight complaints.
But one thing I do very much appreciate about your post is, yes, the old music needs to be documented because too few people in general are talking about it. So hopefully this article will introduce people to the work of pre-Raja composers.
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brangan
June 8, 2020
Madan: There is no point in grumbling about why people only want to talk about the Beatles because that’s just how wondrous their music is.
That’s NOT AT ALL what I am saying.
I am only talking about people WRITING articles needing more context. Talk about the Beatles all you want in a personal space. If you are writing a professional piece and saying “there’s nothing worth discussing before the Beatles,” then (1) that’s a HUGE stance to take, and (2) if you are going to take that stance, then you better be solid in your research and substantiation.
Celebrate a musician all you want. But when you say “he did this first”, you’d better have substantiation for that — and that’s missing in most pieces I read. And Raja was certainly not the first to break the so-called Carnatic-style of Tamil film music, which is what most of this piece is about.
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Madan
June 8, 2020
I must have missed those articles then, being away from the bubble as I am.
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KV
June 8, 2020
If we draw a parallel to say Mobile phones.
Were there no mobile phones before the iPhone or Android ?
Yes; there definitely were , for at least 15 years or so.
Did they at the time must have features; did they exude coolth ?
Absolutely. Some models of some manufacturers did (Razr by Motorola with its first 100 songs in a mobile , the flip top , Nokia Communicator with its marriage of a PDA , stylus and a phone , Blackberry with their crackberry aficionados etc )
Did they bring about a radical shift in mobile telephony when a new model was released ?
Again – Yes. Blackberry with its keyboard , Nokia with its pretty much indestructible handhelds.
Didn’t they all fade into obscurity shortly after the first iPhone debuted , followed thereafter by Android? ?
Oh. Most definitely.
And why would that be ?
Probably because the iPhone at the time represented as Apple CEO said in his evergreen presentation for the ages – iPhone was a leap through product , ahead by 5 years of any other phone then in the market.
Was the iPhone designed and conceived in a vacuum ?
Not at all. It built upon and took cues from many of its forebears. But no one who looked at the first iPhone would deny that this was one of a kind. Something that felt magical , a leap forward.
Do people still think (or think fondly) of pre 2007 mobile devices ?
I doubt it. There may be some of us who have an old phone lying around.
Makes for a good reminiscence about the good old days when we occasionally come across it when cleaning our closets. But hand over heart – I’m sure most of us are glad that we have moved on. That we could move on because there was a wholesome thing to move on to. Something that offered a full package in terms of functionality ,design aesthetics , cool quotient , longevity.
So does that mean iPhone is the best phone ever ?
Not at all – it has its frustrating shortcomings, an eccentric design for certain actions and a hard control by its creator(s) in the workflow.
Is Android the best then ?
Not at all – it has its own share of frustrating limitations.
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Srinivas V
June 8, 2020
Hello Baradwaj, Request to do an interview with Maestro Ilayaraja Sir. Please Sir
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Ravi
June 9, 2020
Point well made. I recall an article in The Hindu several years back by a well-known film historian who had traced the history of Tamizh film music. he directly jumped from the era of MS/MKT to Ilayaraja as if what came in between merits no mention.
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brangan
June 9, 2020
Again, this article is NOT about comparing people.
It’s about respecting and acknowledging and just mentioning history — EVEN AS YOU SAY RAJA IS THE GREATEST (if that’s your opinion).
Consider this piece:
https://thewire.in/the-arts/an-artiste-of-the-millennium-ilaiyaraaja-at-75
I have many points I’d argue about here, but I’ll just focus on two.
“Ilaiyaraja revolutionised film music, for the first time we had what was a blend of Indian classical music, Western classical music and folk music of the Tamils.”
That’s part of what I have discussed in this article. If you say, “IMO nobody has blended all this in a better way,” of course that’s valid.
But… “for the first time”?
“Through songs like [Thenpandi Cheemaiyile] he redefined the existing grammar of vocal representation that associated melody and pathos with certain singers and brought his own voice to change that norm.”
Again, no! At a time Mukesh and Talat and Rafi were usually called in to do melody/pathos songs, SD Burman sang those “melody/pathos” songs in a voice that appeared “unmelodic”.
Similarly, MSV’s happy and sad versions of the title song of SOLLATHAAN NINAIKKIREN…
Again, if you say “Raja sang the most songs, compared to earlier composers,” of course!
But… “he redefined the existing grammar of vocal representation”?
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Madan
June 9, 2020
“Ilaiyaraja revolutionised film music, for the first time we had what was a blend of Indian classical music, Western classical music and folk music of the Tamils” – Regarding this, I would say it very much depends on how you define Western classical music. If by that is simply meant something that resembles the sound of WCM because a hundred violins were deployed, then yes it was done before Raja’s time. If by that is meant actually writing harmony at a Western classical level, only Salil Da had done it and he didn’t do it in Tamil music so it was for the first time in Tamil. This has absolutely nothing to do with my likes or dislikes. I am a huge SJ fan and I don’t consider one note harmony of Geet Gaata Hoon Main as Western classical though it was common to hear aficionados of HFM refer to it as such. There has to be something meaningful going on in the bass clef for any piano playing to be described as approaching classical. Otherwise it is functionally the same as playing a harmonium, only the sound is different because it’s piano.
Notice I am using the word ‘approaching’ because even Raja doesn’t write compositions as per the rules of Western classical and that would not be the point anyway because these are four minute film songs. But if I compare Geet Gaata Hoon Main and En Vaaniley, I could remove the right hand piano parts of the latter completely and you would still have an independent left hand part to listen to. So this is not about doing it ‘better’. Pre-Raja, only Salil was writing harmony in a Western music kind of way. Just to be clear, harmony meaning chords or what is called accompaniment in Indian music because we don’t see the scope for harmonic independence that Western music does (and where you would actually write songs chords-up); NOT vocal harmony because we commonly mean voice when we use the word harmony and that’s wrong.
The others, whether in Hindi or Tamil, were imitating the sound of Western music without imbibing a Western harmonic vocabulary. From RD onwards, composers began to gingerly write guitar chord parts. You can hear some of that in MSV’s songs too. But even something like writing a piano passage whether the melody and harmony are independent and the left hand part doesn’t simply imitate the right hand note for note did not happen before Raja (again, except that Salil might have done it). Maybe Naushad on Saathi, I will have to go back and check the song Mere Jeevan Saathi. But the way I look at it, Mere Jeevan Saathi is more meaningfully Western than Rakhwale. Western is not hundreds of violins and woodwinds to produce a grand sound. Western is all about harmonic development. I am leaving out here the contrapuntal work Raja was doing or independent bass parts in maybe 90% of his songs because THAT would indeed be only a matter of doing it better than others before him.
““Through songs like [Thenpandi Cheemaiyile] he redefined the existing grammar of vocal representation that associated melody and pathos with certain singers and brought his own voice to change that norm.”” – Here I completely agree with you that this is an off base/exaggerated compliment.
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Madan
June 9, 2020
Yes, Mere Jeevan Saathi at least has more than the usual level of sophistication (or lack thereof) for its time in Hindi music.
In the mukda, there are two separate string parts and also an interesting bass part (sounds like finger plucking on a wood bass). The second and third interludes have interesting modulations even if the resolution is chaotic and abrupt. Not like Raja pivoting on a common chord to a different scale so smoothly you wouldn’t know he modulated if you weren’t paying attention. But I can at least appreciate the intent behind experimenting. MM and RD also indulged in fleeting experimentation like this – Raahi Tha Main Awara and Tumne Mujhe Dekha respectively.
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ItsVerySimple
June 9, 2020
That exercise of juxtaposing Ilaiyaraaja’s folks songs with others was rather bizarre. If the point is : there existed folk songs before him, Ilaiyaraaja is not even needed there.
If the point is this was “the roadmap” for Ilaiyaraaja – it’s all the more problematic and flawed. In one instance, Ilaiyaraaja’s song is more authentic but in 1958 the unnamed lyricist did something radical with colloquial words? (It cannot be attributed to K V Mahadevan;
The “rule” broken here isn’t relevant and to balance the scale somehow using the lyrics is as lazy as these pieces randomly attributing others’ lyrics to Ilaiyaraaja). In another instance, the “comparison” (which is not a “comparison”) is about a classical-ised MSV folk song and a “un-village like” Ilaiyaraaja song – that’s rather a backhanded and desperate way to find this roadmap to find Ilaiyaraaja’s folk. “Neither composer is being “realistic” about what a village song is.” is a cop-out. Let’s talk about Ilaiyaraaja’s “realistic” folk songs to make the point about why his folk stands out – and do we find a roadmap to those songs? (I am not saying the roadmap doesn’t exist – I only doubt the point wouldn’t be as strong as you make it to be).
That film folk songs existed before Ilaiyaraaja and that art is continuous are valid points to make but the constant “yes, he is more authentic, but” comes across as rather a weak attempt to service this theory somehow more than Ilaiyaraaja’s genius. The mere passing of time or baton between the composers couldn’t have magically resulted in the “authenticity” in Ilaiyaraaja’s folk. I know you know that, too. All of these just doesn’t fit into a cohesive opinion in this piece or rather doesn’t seem to belong together.
Sankar Ganesh gets a kind mention but was his folk closer to Ilaiyaraaja’s or how much did he extrapolate from Ilaiyaraaja? Did he make his folk as different as Ilaiyaraaja did differently from his predecessors? It has been more than forty years since Ilaiyaraaja arrived and two generations of music composers have made music – has Folk in Tamil film music changed significantly from the way Ilaiyaraaja did it? How much of the folk incorporated in Tamil film music post-Ilaiyaraaja is different from his approach? I guess that would be a really telling story to understand Ilaiyaraaja’s folk (or his film carnatic/western classical etc.,)
Had he not decided to make such an authentically rooted “village movie”, Ilaiyaraaja’s sound may have been different, or he may have had to wait a little longer to unleash that particular sound of his we heard in Sevvanthi poo mudicha chinnakka. Who knows!
This isn’t even funny. This takes nothing away from Bharathiraja but takes a lot away from Ilaiyaraaja. And coming from you, it is mighty disappointing. How does one start with – “let’s give due credit to pre-Raaja composers” by not giving into “pet theories” – and end up with these who-knows and what-ifs about Ilaiyaraaja himself?
but I’m fairly sure some rules were broken
I chuckled here, to be honest. Some rules must have been broken by somebody, someone must have recorded it somewhere, someone needs to write about it… I understand the sentiment, the mild frustration even – but the problems mentioned in this article aren’t specific to writings about Ilaiyaraaja, or folk-music in films or film music even. Lazy (culture) journalists, sleeping editors, lack of cultural record-keeping, knowing old composers are valid issues to worry and muse about but this quick descent into “Everything is about Ilaiyaraja!” mild whine was quite.. amusing and entertaining. In my opinion – Ilaiyaraaja is both the best and worst candidate to discuss this problem. Like any great artist, he made sure he carry forwarded the torch. But like very few geniuses that arrive once in the bluest moons, he changed the game so much that he predictably outshines most people in the discourse. This isn’t a justification of the pieces you talk about but this piece only presents more problems.
they rarely acknowledge the times, the milieu, the contribution of the director in shaping (or demanding) a particular song
Mani Ratnam had to be convinced to not reject Sundari Kannaal Oru Sedhi (as mentioned by Raaja), Kamal says he cannot explain to him what he needs and Raaja is forced to work like a pediatrician treating babies, Nasser wanted to increase the tempo in Thendral Vandhu Theendum Bodhu, Majority of songs in RV Udhayakumar’s films are “rejects” from other directors.. Even if we ignore all of this – Raaja is (in)famous for NOT giving freedom for the directors, isn’t it? It’s one thing to ask to tone down the adulations but to worry about director’s “contributions” in “shaping” the songs going unacknowledged is – even for pet peeves – really scraping the barrels. As always, Raaja has the best answers – to quote him – avartta kondu vandhu kottina eththanaiyo kuppaikku ellaam paattu potrukaar. That’s the bigger story.
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ItsVerySimple
June 9, 2020
The first time I heard anyone mention Ilaiyaraaja as Suyambu was Mani Ratnam in a Tamil weekly. I have heard it many times after that but I never thought it is used to denote his art or music. I always saw it as about the way he works, the way he imbibed all the music made available to him and the way he made everything he imbibed spectacularly as his own. If he sits in a room and writes notations likes he writes angry or romantic or affectionate letters non-stop as substantiated by his assistants and the directors who worked with them – it’s easier to see why they use words like suyambu about him or how it entered the Ilaiyaraaja lexicon. I have zero qualms about it. I am not sure if any piece specifically used that word to describe his music so – but I wouldn’t reject the word in describing him. It fits him mighty well and good, in my opinion.
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Arjun
June 9, 2020
An article on folk music predecessors and no mention of the Parai? I suggest people watch this video below to understand why Ilayaraja is indeed unparalleled when it comes to folk music. I love MSV and KVM and even Deva. When it comes to other genres, we can debate, but folk? No.
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brangan
June 9, 2020
Arjun: Ilayaraja is indeed unparalleled when it comes to folk music.
There is no doubt about that.
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brangan
June 9, 2020
ItsVerySimple: I don’t think it’s taking ANYTHING away from Raja to say that had Bharathiraja not appeared on the scene and taken Tamil cinema to a very authentic village scenario, we “may” not have had certain songs.
For me, ‘Sevvanthi poo mudicha’ is a far more authentic rural song than, say, ‘Machaana paatheengala’ — the latter is a tad more generic. The former is unheard of in the music till then. So it’s also that the opportunity presented itself in the form of this director, this film, this song situation — all of which was “never before”.
To me, this is like saying ARR too was aided by his time and place. Had he appeared in the pre-Internet era, his urban/global sound may not have reached north India or even beyond. The Internet broke many barriers and ARR is a huge beneficiary — which is not to say he isn’t talented.
But all talent needs a “vessel”, an outlet — and to my mind, 16 VAYATHINILE was the first film that really liberated Raja. It really brought out his Raja-ness, These two met each other, and something happened in that soundtrack that you can’t find even in the UTHIRI POOKKAL soundtrack (even though that was a “village film”, too).
Bharathiraja is a huge figure in Tamil cinema, probably the most important one post 1970s — because most filmmakers who came before him had college degrees and an urban outlook, and even when they made a BAGAPPIRIVINAI, it owed more to the prevailing “stage drama” school of storytelling.
You can set the same story in a city, with a few changes (in profession, milieu etc.)
But you cannot imagine 16 VAYATHINILE in a city. The “village”-ness is everything, and you can see/hear it in “Sevvanthi poo mudicha…”
But I agree with one thing:
I should perhaps have worded the headline better. What I wanted to do here is point that the de-Carnatic-isation of Tamil film music happened long before Raja, and therefore show a progression of songs where the Papanasam Sivan/MKT model changed through the decades before attaining full bloom in the hands of Raja.
“Roadmap” perhaps suggests something else to a reader.
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brangan
June 9, 2020
Madan: You don’t have to explain that to me 🙂 I know what Raja has done down the ages 🙂
But to someone who does not know, do you think they are going to be able to parse this statement the same way you did?
“Ilaiyaraja revolutionised film music, for the first time we had what was a blend of Indian classical music, Western classical music and folk music of the Tamils”
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Madan
June 9, 2020
BR: I remain very conflicted about this. On the one hand, I see your point that you don’t want Raja worship to cast everything that came before it in a shadow and I have mentioned earlier how I relate that to the pre/post RDB scenario. That being said, I also feel there is a strange phenomenon where Ilayaraja is both wildly popular and yet underrated in that the true import of what he is achieved is never properly articulated because not many people are deeply into both Indian and Western music and it is thought of as just more competent and capable film music.
In that sense, as a technical statement, to say he was the first to blend indian classical, western classical and tamil folk is not particularly inaccurate because it is true that the earlier composers did not have the know how and wherewithal to achieve the unforeseen synergy that he managed.
I know that say both Tere Bina Jiya Jaaye Na and Ilaya Nila are Indian raga based songs supported by guitar chords but the difference is you could take the Ilaya Nila chords and overlay soul melody and have Stevie Wonder sing it and nobody would know an Indian composer wrote those chords. You may disagree here and that’s ok but to me, that is not a difference of degree but a breakthrough and a departure from the previous approach. It’s like, you wouldn’t say Mozart was ‘ONLY’ building on JS Bach though he did build on what Bach had done. It was also a departure from the Bach approach in many ways, maybe most ways even because baroque disappeared as a mainstream classical approach even if Bach per se remained influential. In Raja’s case, the departure aspect is not obvious because mostly those who have only listened to Indian music cannot appreciate the staggering difference in harmonic development when we get from his predecessors to Raja’s work but it is there and no harm done if it is emphasised. I would only have not emphasised just Western classical and said harmony instead because his groove writing is phenomenal and, again, terribly underrated. But again, if I say harmony, people are going to think of the equivalent of sparrows chirping in unison on a tree.
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brangan
June 9, 2020
A friend sent me this and has made me reflect a lot 🙂
What can Raja do about this? He professes his regards for his predecessors all the time…so the tone of the article comes across like that Agni dialogue….unakku yaar melaya kovam
Let me elaborate on this a bit. I know you will take this constructively since you know me and I’m not a rabid fan that’s just out to get you but more a friend.
You probably write more pieces on Raja than any other composer. When you write about Raja, and you can go back and read all your prior pieces, it almost feels like you are compelled to equalize the article by including something that bothers you – quality of recording, tinny sound, chorus singers etc. These are all valid btw, and I don’t expect you to write puff pieces.
But sometimes I think…do you do it because a majority of folks are only singing his praises and overlooking all these faults? The only article that was probably an exception was the GVM one prior to release of NEP where you heard some tracks prior to music release. I know you hear a lot of things from insiders about him (hopefully good as well at least from what I see in terms of Manobala and others opining, and in being fair about good and bad) but I don’t believe you let all that influence your writing. You genuinely write what you feel.
But I don’t see that balance when you do pieces on others….maybe Santosh N does not have that side for you to write about, but you get what I’m saying.
Again, it’s my personal opinion and I could be wrong. Finally, I don’t want you to take this in the wrong sense ( I think you won’t) it’s just me thinking through your writing, your disposition due to external effects (maybe you feel strongly that there is no balance to what most pro-people write about him)….I don’t know. Just some ramblings 😄
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Madan
June 9, 2020
BR: Interesting POV. I am not going to comment one way or the other on it because that would add to the tone policing. It is fine, let there be all kinds of perspectives, balance, imbalance, ellame. And let people judge the articles individually in their own way.
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Devarsi Ghosh
June 9, 2020
BR, did you want to write this after reading the HuffPo piece by Rajesh Rajamani by any chance? Because this seems like a response to that piece, which essentially argued how Ilayaraja un-Brahminised Tamil film music by introducing folk/Dalit music aspects.
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Shankar
June 9, 2020
Madan, thanks for articulating what you did. I know BR doesn’t need this info, but a lot of us do. It’s because Raja’s music is so accessible that one can listen to all of it without a thought about the depth ingrained in it (I wouldn’t say everything he did, but a lot of what he did). As we all know, he is a classical composer, in the sense, he composes with purpose. Of course he gets input into the situation, milieu etc., but when it comes to composing, there is no experimentation with chords, sounds etc., for most part. He just writes the notations and parts himself, and it all comes together. I know I am generalizing a bit here, but it is substantiated by many who have had the privilege to watch him work. My point is he truly imbibes all these different vocabularies, and integrates it to make it his own, and that is staggering. You said it really well, thanks. Can I ask you to pen a piece that deconstructs his music (or whatever part you want to write about), with some examples?
You also mentioned Raja writing independent bass parts, and it’s one of the things I really love in his songs. Lately I have been enjoying Aalaap Raju playing bass covers of Raja songs (among others). Listen to this and tell me, who writes like this anymore?
Or this one?
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KS
June 9, 2020
This is exactly the kind of thing I have always said (including in Brangan’s blog in a long and provocative comment thread), but everybody would be quick to pounce on me with accusations of millenial vayatherichal, etc. Now Brangan himself seems to acknowledge the excessive thalala-thukivechufying of Ilayaraja. Its one thing for fans to gush over him as if he invented music, but at least cinema critics could use some measure and perspective. Every article on him is a puff piece, and every attribute of his music is elevated to a virtue. I’ll try not to repeat myself, but focus on one point discussed in this article.
Namely, the shift from supposedly Carnatic-inspired music to rustic sounds. In’t this an expected (at least in hindsight) trend rather than some revolution single-handedly pioneered by the visionary Ilayaraja? Its not even as if Ilayaraja invented any new genre or style by himself. So what is the inherent virtue in abandoning one pre-existing style for another, and why are we comparing musicians to prove a point over who did it first?
In the initial days, cinema was dominated by drama artists and musicians with more exposure to mythological stories, so the movies too reflected that influence. Over time once we exhausted that, cinema moved on to newer realms including the village, and Ilayaraja appeared in this period. Today we are bored of village movies, so don’t hear that kind of music either. So is ARR or Anirudh to be heralded for breaking us free of the shackles of villages (the dens of ignorance and superstition) and opening our ears to the future of music (electronic/dubstep or whatever)? Maybe in a couple of decades, we would see such articles too, with all the nostalgia and flowery language. These are just shifting trends often dictated by market forces.
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Heisenberg
June 10, 2020
To build on BR’s article, another few commonly said things about Ilaiyaraaja’s music in TN are,
Before Raja came, AIR only used to play hindi songs even in TN and he changed that.
Nobody before Ilaiyaraaja paid attention to BGM.
As someone born in 80s and not having extensive knowledge about the previous era, can someone confirm or bust these myths.
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brangan
June 10, 2020
Heisenberg: Nobody before Ilaiyaraaja paid attention to BGM.
I think this is an easily establish-able fact, simply because NO ONE before Raja paid special attention to BGMs. In this case, the “first ever” claim is indisputable.
BGM was mostly seen as a generic “mood creator” in Tamil cinema. I mean, I’m sure you can find the odd example of an evocative bit of BGM here and there (like the title track of PATTINA PRAVESAM), but a lot of the time, I doubt even the greats like KV Mahadevan or MSV even bothered to go beyond stock music. (I get the feeling, sometimes, that they just left it to assistants 🙂 )
It was Raja who ushered in the Hollywood “soundtrack model” of writing different pieces for characters/situations, doing reworkings of them, etc.
Before Raja came, AIR only used to play hindi songs even in TN and he changed that.
Now, this I am not so sure.
There is no doubt that certain Hindi films like ARADHANA were blockbusters here (it ran for 25 weeks at the Triplicane STAR theatre) — and the music, too, was a rage. Similarly, YAADON KI BAARAAT etc. Though with the latter, Zeenat Aman may have been a big reason 🙂 (She makes her way into a few Tamil songs later, like Raja’s ‘Pudichaalum pudichen’, which delightfully rhymes ‘Zeenat Aman’ with ‘mael naatu woman’ 😀 )
But I wish there was something concrete out there to prove that the WHOLE STATE OF TAMIL NADU was in the sway of Hindi tunes till Raja came.
So taking only the 1970s, pre-Raja, was nobody airing or listening to the songs of the huge MGR blockbusters like ULAGAM SUTTRUM VAALIBAN? Or the Sivaji hits?
Was a song that was aired ALL THE TIME on radio — like ‘Malligai, en mannan mayangum’ (DHEERGA SUMANGALI) — restricted only to urban areas.
And here’s what I am really curious about.
There is no doubt that Raja’s authentic “rural music” — combined with the spate of authentic “rural Movies” — made him the undisputed champion of every corner of TN.
But what were the rural audiences listening to before, then? Because — as I state in the article — there have been many rural/folk songs earlier, but nothing as “authentic” as Raja’s.
So what were they listening to? I mean, surely, film music was the dominant mode of music, given that we have no pop music, independent music etc. And radios had penetrated to every corner. Were they, therefore, “forced” to listen to the so-called “Carnatic-ised music” from the pre-Raja times?
Which raises another question. How did they react to Raja’s own “Carnatic-ised music” , like say, “Azhagu malar aada”. Did they prefer “Megam karukkayile” and “Rasathi onna” from the same album and ignore this?
It’s very difficult to find these things out now, because of two reasons:
.1. Like I say in this piece, we are very bad in terms of cultural record-keeping. Everything is an extension of our oral traditions, an extension of hearsay.
.2. In the 1970s, say, there were still “gatekeepers” of film music. There was someone in Chennai, say, who decided what played on the radio. (Maybe things changed when the cassette revolution happened and you could make your own mix tapes, but even that, I’m not sure how much reached the villages. How did they pick and choose which songs would play in a thiruvizha loudpeaker, for instance?)
But today, yes, the “control” has passed to the people, which makes them “choose” what they want to listen to. Also today, all this being documented as we speak.
It would be great if people who know and have lived through these times (or even people with AIR contacts 🙂 ) can write about these things!
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brangan
June 10, 2020
KS: Brangan himself seems to acknowledge the excessive thalala-thukivechufying of Ilayaraja.
Brangan is doing no such thing. This is a man who deserves all the thalala-thukivechufying and more.
My peeve is just the sweeping generalisations that often ignore earlier composers, context/milieu, the directors’ contributions, etc.
Re-quoting: “My point is simply that his genius doesn’t need the negation of everyone who came before him.”
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brangan
June 10, 2020
Madan: If you really cannot see the difference between the specificity of your comments and the generic nature of the statement below, I really don’t know what to say!
“Ilaiyaraja revolutionised film music, for the first time we had what was a blend of Indian classical music, Western classical music and folk music of the Tamils”
(As opposed to, say: ““Ilaiyaraja revolutionised film music. Earlier, too, we’d seen Indian classical music, Western classical music and folk music of the Tamils, but Raja took it to a whole new level with his sophisticated blending of these elements.”)
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Madan
June 10, 2020
@Heisenberg: I highly doubt it happened the way the legend is propagated (interestingly, even SPB having worked so much with MSV used to perpetrate this legend at least back when he was on good terms with Raja).
My mother was born in 1959 and grew up in Chennai. She knew all the MSV classics – TKR and post TKR – and used to play them on compilation tapes at home…in Mumbai, where I grew up. That was my introduction to MSV’s music. When I went to Chennai on summer hols too, the elders used to play MSV songs on radio/tape/TV. As a teen, when I got hold of an mp3 best of SPB compilation, I already knew that Unnakene Mele Endhral/Engeyum Epothum/Kaalangal Pathinaru/Kadavul Amaithu Vaitha Media were MSV songs and not Raja songs.
My question would be how would people know all about these MSV songs – including songs that came smack in the middle of Raja’s reign – if RD had indeed pushed Tamil songs completely off the radio. Was there a fascination with RD? For sure. Would it have affected the prospects of live orchestras playing Tamil songs? Yes. But that doesn’t mean the music disappeared.
I suspect it is just a narrative and one in which Raja fans have invested a lot for whatever reason. Just the way Rahman fans invested in a narrative that Raja’s music simply disappeared in the 90s when it didn’t. I mean, how would I know of songs like Nil Nil Nil or Velli Nilave living in Mumbai? When Kadhalukku Mariyathai came out, my Tamil classmates were humming Ennai Thalata Varuvalla or O Baby Baby (depending on their respective likes). In the same way, I don’t find the Tamil vanguard against North invasion narrative completely convincing. Yes, Raja elevated interest in Tamil songs but we must also remember that by late 70s, RD was on the wane, HKKN being his last true blue classic album. He did some good work after that but much of it was increasingly in a ghazal or soft melodic vein which doesn’t appeal so much down South. It was his rhythms that had captured the imagination of Tamil audience and now that was being replaced with Bappi disco. Adhellam even Shankar Ganesh could match, let alone Raja. By the 80s, what was good about Hindi music was again the ghazal format which for whatever reason doesn’t marinate well in the South and is disregarded as ‘too serious’ for films.
Likewise, on BGM, it is less that people paid less attention to BGM before Raja and more that he was both highly accomplished in scoring and also brought a different set of sensibilities. Raja himself said that the trend at the time was that ever scene should start and end with loud music, like a bang. Nadagam style. He got rid of it with support from new, open minded directors like Bharatiraja, Mahendran and Balu Mahendra. He began to specifically tailor the whole sound design as per the requirement of the films and compose identifiable motifs for each film. It’s not about other composers paying less attention to BGM; it’s just that Raja did it at an exalted level that’s hard to grasp.
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Madan
June 10, 2020
BR: I maintain that merely having Western classical instruments play in the background does not tantamount to incorporating Western classical. Nobody says that about Whitney, Celine or Beyonce ballads and some of them do incorporate string sections. I have explained my position already in a lot of detail so TL DR: I don’t find any meaningful homophony, let alone polyphony before Raja’s time. So the statement that he combined ICM, WCM and Tamil folk is not inaccurate, at least not less accurate than saying others did it before but not to his level.
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Madan
June 10, 2020
“Can I ask you to pen a piece that deconstructs his music (or whatever part you want to write about), with some examples?” – As you can tell, it would be hard to compress the deconstruction into ONE article.
I have written two articles previously. One on Raja’s use of modulation, even in so-called run of the mill songs like Perai Sollava.
Another on the Kadhal Kavithai BGM:
I want to write more but right now, I am bichdan from my keyboard due to lockdown (staying at parents’ place) and I am not so adept that I can tell you the note just by listening to it. I need to be able to play it and work out which part is in which scale and then feel sure enough about what I am writing. Let’s see, maybe more of them in June. But meantime, I could probably do a write up on his grooves. Will think about that one.
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Heisenberg
June 10, 2020
Thanks Madan and BR for the detailed explanation.
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Madan
June 10, 2020
“Before Raja came, AIR only used to play hindi songs even in TN and he changed that.” – I asked my mother about this very statement and she said it’s not true. She mentioned channels like Madras 1 and 2 and said Vividh Bharati used to play Tamil songs too.
The way she put it is, Aradhana was responsible for popularizing Hindi songs which had never been popular in TN before. But not that they wiped out Tamil.
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KS
June 10, 2020
@brangan: “My point is simply that his genius doesn’t need the negation of everyone who came before him.”
That sounds like a weasel-ey copout where you want it both ways just to sound balanced and smart. Singling out and glorifying a person intrinsically involves an implicit, if not explicit, debasement of contemporaries and predecessors. If one were to objectively acknowledge the achievements of others and place the person as part of a continuum, then such thalala-thukivechufying wouldn’t happen at all. Like Vijay says in Sarkar, you just prefer “50% of people are smart” rather than “50% of people are idiots”. Attempts at tempering idolizing with respectful nods at others are as good as “I’m not racist, I have black friends, but…”.
Maybe if they use wrong facts, that can be questioned. But none of these gush pieces involve hard facts as such. Like they might say he was the first to use rustic folk music, to which you might point out previous instances of folk music by others. To which they could just say IR was the first one who used “real” or “authentic” folk elements. Most of these are impressions with a facade of fact, so cannot be argued with meaningfully.
Besides, as I had asked earlier, whats the big deal about village music? If you read these puff articles, you’d think that just using crude parai sounds is some great musical achievement or stroke of brilliance. Sure, Carnatic music is brahminical and hence evil, but it too is a native art form. Lauding IR for moving away from that sounds like another attempt at sneaking in political aspects in the guise of music appreciation.
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Madan
June 10, 2020
“Singling out and glorifying a person intrinsically involves an implicit, if not explicit, debasement of contemporaries and predecessors. ” – That would be the case if music was a zero sum game like politics. But it’s not. It’s more of a great-greater-greatest gradation. If I say I think Tendulkar is a greater batsman than VVS and Sunny, that is not a debasement of either but simply ranking Tendulkar’s achievements even higher than VVS/Sunny. If I wanted to debase, I would say something like, “even a part time bowler can bait Afridi into throwing away his wicket”. Tho I do understand that music and films for some reason seem to be intensely political in TN, which it is not in Mumbai. Maybe this is because MGR and Jayalalitha had film careers and both Kamal and Rajni are testing the waters now. But all three mahamedais of Tamil film music have been largely apolitical from what I know. Which brings me to…
“Sure, Carnatic music is brahminical and hence evil, but it too is a native art form. Lauding IR for moving away from that sounds like another attempt at sneaking in political aspects in the guise of music appreciation.” – This simple and simplistic formulation would work if Raja did not use Carnatic music in his work. But not only did he do so extensively, he has even given discourses on grahabedham to music critic Subbudu. He took lessons from Dakshinamurthy in the beginning and later, while already working as a composer, continued lessons with TVG. Is also a huge admirer of the late Balamuralikrishna. Etc etc.
What Raja fans talk about is not moving AWAY from Carnatic but creating a paradigm in which the perceived differences between classical music of India and the West and Tamil folk music. It is more accurate to call it rural music if we are being pedantic than folk music but whatever. Yes, all of it is ultimately subjective because in music one can always pretend to not hear the differences as a last resort and one cannot establish it through scientific uncontrolled experiments. But is it political? No. At least not until recent efforts starting with TM Krishna to examine Raja’s work in a political light. Speaking of, I don’t agree with the central thesis of his article at all and as such dislike the cultural Left’s tendency to divide music into hierarchies. You would agree equally that it would be unfair to dub Rahman’s incorporation of Madurai Sufi music into film music as Islamization (or Talibanization if you are Tejasvi Surya) of music. It is simply a composer bringing his cultural roots to bear on the music he composes, which is the most natural thing to do and which can often lead to a lot of creativity and innovation. The rural influences in Raja’s music come from the songs he grew up with in the village. It’s that simple and he has said as much, but of course the Left never likes to keep anything that simple.
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Madan
June 10, 2020
*paradigm in which the perceived differences between classical music of India and the West and Tamil folk music are reduced if not eliminated.
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Bluehat
June 10, 2020
I am writing after a long time. So, let me first thank you. I’ve been following you since your Indian Express days. Whenever I am a bit down, I go to my favourite writers. You’re one of them. To me, you are a genius writer. Your writing has given me a high every single time without fail (like Ilaiyaraaja’s music!). Thanks.
First time in all these years, I was surprised and came out feeling that you have uncharacteristically over-reacted and have come across a bit out of sorts.
“If someone from 50 years hence read what’s been written about the maestro, they’d think that, before him, there was no Indian film music worth a discussion.”
I guess, most of Ilaiyaraaja veriyans understand the ‘thalala thukivachifying’ in the tributes. They know that there was/is/will be great music by other great composers. (I, a die-hard fan myself, think that the tunes that KVM composed for the Thiruvilaiyadal’s Hemanatha Bhagavathar episode makes it the best musical block in a film.) Even at Ilaiyaraaja’s peak, we had MSV, Shankar Ganesh, T.Rajender, Narasimhan, S.A.Rajkumar, Manoj-Gyan, Chandrbose, Deva and others churning out chart-busters. Then came ARR. And more over, 50 years is too far into the future to worry about…
“My point is that art doesn’t come out of a vacuum, like a god. With the latter, there’s this word used: suyambu, self-created, something that’s not man-made but rose of its own accord.”
I don’t believe Maestro is a suyambu – not withstanding Rajinikanth’s endorsement! Without his brother and their harmonium, the folk songs by his mother and others in his village, the encouragement of his teachers and friends, the inspiring music by CRS and MSV and many other influences, there is no Ilaiyaraaja. Maestro himself acknowledges all the influences.
“But in the process, we shouldn’t forget journalistic rigour. Pet theories cannot become “fact”. Hearsay cannot replace research and fact-checks. Passion cannot become arguments. “IMO” cannot become history.”
It sounds really odd, coming from BR. Are you not stating the obvious? Or are you not underestimating the power of internet and the intelligence of ordinary folks? Let me share the experience I had today. I watched ‘A Beautiful Mind”. I simply loved it. Got curious about a couple of aspects – the wife’s commitment through all the trouble and his life after the Nobel prize. So, I googled, landed in Wikipedia, browsed a few pages, visited the external sources, watched an interview on Youtube and understood that the film has a few gaps.
1. Nash had a relationship with another woman, but refused to marry her because of the status gap.
2. He and his wife divorced, after some years lived together and then remarried.
3. There were questions about his sexual orientation.
4. He was once arrested for indecent exposure.
And a few more…
My point is internet has its own system of checks and balances. So why worry about authenticity of cultural/historical records? I believe most people have learnt to exercise caution and don’t take things at face value. After all, great masters like Thiruvalluvar have advised us to be on guard “Epporul yar yar vai ketpinum…”
“Which brings to another pet peeve in all these Ilaiyaraaja articles: they rarely acknowledge the times, the milieu, the contribution of the director in shaping (or demanding) a particular song. Everything is Ilaiyaraaja.”
You are right. The question is why so many writers and editors are doing it. To take another example, on many FM channels they have exclusive slots for golden hits, 80’s hits, 90’s hits and the recent ones. But still it feels like “Everything is Ilaiyaraaja”. Why this thalala thukivachifying? Million-dollar question. Probably, it calls for a rigorous inter-disciplinary – social, political, cultural, psychological, personal and musical – investigation to find answers.
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Anu Warrier
June 10, 2020
My point is simply that his genius doesn’t need the negation of everyone who came before him.
Amen!
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TambiDude
June 10, 2020
““Before Raja came, AIR only used to play hindi songs even in TN and he changed that.” – I asked my mother about this very statement and she said it’s not true. She mentioned channels like Madras 1 and 2 and said Vividh Bharati used to play Tamil songs too.
The way she put it is, Aradhana was responsible for popularizing Hindi songs which had never been popular in TN before. But not that they wiped out Tamil.”
Your mom is right. The 70s period before IR was the time when the young generation of TN were more into HFM (specially RDB) than TFM. Few of my cousins who studied in that period use to say how Kishore Kumar/RDB use to dominate in college hostels. After all a decaying MSV and atrocious TMS were hardly a competition. However Vivid Bharati was full of tamil songs with some slots of Hindi. But those days there was Radio Ceylone also in short wave.
Some folks tuned into that too.
I remember I started hearing comments like “tamil songs are now good”, this was around 1977 when IR was slowly and steadily rising.
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TambiDude
June 10, 2020
In early 70s singer A V Ramanan and Uma Ramaman use to earn money by performing in weddings and other functions. I saw two performances of them. Almost all of their songs were RDB songs and I was forced to tolerate their atrocious Hindi accent 🙂
RDB’s sound in 70s was a generation ahead of all others in Indian movie scene.
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TambiDude
June 10, 2020
In fact it sounds good even now. Recently SRK’s daugther performed in some film awards function and danced to two of RDB Asha Song “Aaj Kee Raat (Anamika)” and “Kaap Raheen Ho Main (Joshila)”. The sound is good even today.
Check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cypySqMzlA0
Very modern sound.
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KS
June 10, 2020
@Madan:
Debasement is not always so explicit like “Ilayaraja is god, MSV sucks”. Its the implicit kind that brangan talks about, where you could downplay the achievements of immediate predecessors and contemporaries, or (in hindsight) give disproportionate or sole credit to the person for things he might have had little to do with. That is just the nature of a tribute piece, so it is pointless to gripe about it. And I do think this is a zero-sum game considering our attention spans and interest levels.
I’m not opposed to political readings of music, they can be interesting and fun (even if they happen to be bogus and sinister). When we do it for every other art form, music should be no exception. But we should be free to apply that across the spectrum. If Carnatic influences can be vilified as an example of Brahminical patriarchy and elitism, then Sufi influences too can be seen as creeping Talibanization. Inevitably, everybody subscribes to one of these views, but when confronted with the other view, would quickly start gassing about how music is universal and beyond the spirit and stuff.
But that was not my point, and I’m not questioning Ilayaraja’s intentions (or talents) at all. Sure, he is a key player in the (overall) shift of Tamil film music to rustic folk roots (though as Brangan points out, others have done it before, and Ilayaraja himself has shown his mettle with Carnatic compositions too). But even so, how is this a musical achievement? We see such trends and genre shifts all the time, and they’re dictated by circumstances and market forces.
Also what did you intend by “but creating a paradigm in which the perceived differences between classical music of India and the West and Tamil folk music”? I am trying to extrapolate to what you might have meant, but its still just a soup of words.
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brangan
June 11, 2020
Arjun:I suggest people watch this video below to understand why Ilayaraja is indeed unparalleled when it comes to folk music…
I watch his videos and what I love most about them is that he combines knowledge with very infectious fandom (not in the ‘rabid’ sense, but in the ‘genuine admiration’ sense) 🙂
But he has a recent video out where he talks about Raja using Lalitha ragam because the Seetha character in UNNAL MUDIYUM THAMBI is named Lalitha.
True.
But I wish he’d mentioned that (“a decaying”) MSV — in MAZHALAI PATTALAM — used Gowri Manohari ragam for the song at the situation when Sumithra realises the author she loves (whose pen name is Gowri Manohari) is actually Vishnu Vardhan.
And who knows? Before MSV, maybe we can point to another example of such a thing…
And this is not just about Raja.
Whenever ARR fans marvel that ‘Kannum kannum kollai adithal” is a ‘rock’ song and it’s in Shivaranjani ragam, I feel like saying: “How about a FOLK song by MSV in Shanmugapriya ragam, ‘Ennadi raakamma’…!”
Or a sexy ‘pop’ song by MSV, like ‘Hello my dear wrong number’ in Dharmavathi.
Or KVM — who was hardly the experimenter MSV was (and much more of a traditionalist) — tuning ‘Yeri karai mele’ in pure Arabi ragam, while the other duet between SSR and Devika isn’t Classical at all, and has an acoustic guitar backing (was ‘Yeri karai mele’ the first time a ‘social/romantic situation’ was given the royal raga treatment?)
My angst is not the celebration of talent. This appreciation is our repayment for the unimaginable riches we get from an artiste, for FREE. I cannot imagine a life without Kannadhasan’s lyrics, which have surely influenced even my English writing.
My angst is only that when someone says “never before” or “for the first time”, that becomes the WORD for future generations, many of whom are never going to hear a pre-Raja era song. (For that matter, I know many who call themselves Raja fans and know little beyond ‘Thendral vandhu’ or the PUNNAGAI MANNAN theme…)
Of course, there’s nothing I can do about it except maybe expend that angst in a piece whose headline I wish had been better 🙂
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Madan
June 11, 2020
“Its the implicit kind that brangan talks about, where you could downplay the achievements of immediate predecessors and contemporaries, or (in hindsight) give disproportionate or sole credit to the person for things he might have had little to do with” – Now you are shifting goalposts. If we’re talking about an article which makes wrong claims to glorify Raja’s work, then yes that’s subtle debasement.
But here’s what you said:
“Singling out and glorifying a person intrinsically involves an implicit, if not explicit, debasement of contemporaries and predecessors” – No, this does not necessarily hold true every time. I gave a good analogy from cricket to make my point. IF I rate Tendulkar higher, it does not mean I am making false claims on his behalf to rate him higher than Dravid or Laxman or that I am unaware of their work. I could have followed the career of all three and decided based on some yardsticks that this is the case. One may disagree with the yardstick but that does not make my argument a bad faith one.
These, by the way, are ALWAYS and without exception, the assumptions a group of fans of a Tamil personality make about a view that differs from theirs – that the other person is unaware of the work of their idol and/or has an agenda. Raja fan group is no different. If your view veers an inch from theirs, you are at best a ‘neetral’ or a ‘Rahmaniac’. But because fan groups assume that doesn’t make it so. They can shout out a lie together to raise their decibel level way over the lone dissenter to drown him out but it will still be a lie.
‘ we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid’
“If Carnatic influences can be vilified as an example of Brahminical patriarchy and elitism” – The question is who is vilifying other than confused leftie Brahmin T M Krishna himself? I say confused because on the one hand he concocts a narrative where the banning of Orampo pushed Raja to showcase his Carnatic prowess and seek acceptance from the Brahminical hieararchy. But Orampo itself came in 1979 by which time Raja had done much work that conformed to mainstream, i.e, Carnatic hegemony whatever, norms. So this is simply gross revisionism. OTOH TMK cannot bring himself to digest Raja transposing a different tune on Mari Mari. Now you cannot lament a ‘lost musical revolution’ and also apply rules to stymie that revolution at one and the same time, it doesn’t work that way. I guess TMK mistakenly believes comforting stuff like late Beatles was a revolution while real revolutions look like Mao or Lenin.
Raja himself has never attacked the Carnatic bastion while he has also not groveled at their feet to beg acceptance. Anybody who thinks Raja’s work represents a rejection of Carnatic sensibilities and therefore represents some sort of dictatorship of the proletariat is living in a fool’s paradise.
“Also what did you intend by “but creating a paradigm in which the perceived differences between classical music of India and the West and Tamil folk music”? ” –
The complete sentence was “creating a paradigm in which the perceived differences between classical music of India and the West and Tamil folk music are reduced if not eliminated”, which is why I made an addendum to correct the typo. What I am saying is Raja was not seeking to REPLACE but to add and to create simultaneous co-existence of these genres. So the idea again was not to replace Carnatic with something else but to show that Carnatic, Western and rural can all work together. There are actual songs like Thaana Vandha Santhaname where this can clearly be observed, this is not a made up thing.
This is also the context in which I said music is not a zero sum game. Whether it is Raja or Rahman, they were/are only trying to bring people together with music. Now if people want to use the same music to divide each other, that is their problem, their fault. That cannot be blamed on the music itself. So when you say non existent attention spans make everything including music a zero sum game, well, that is the fault of the people, not the thing itself. This is also why I resist politicization of music because all it leads to is weaponization of a made up rhetoric. If Raja himself says that all his body of work was intended to overthrow the bleddy Brahmins and impose a Dalit supremacy, then go ahead and write reams about it. Otherwise to attribute Caste angles to it, whether out of so-called ‘good intention’ of Left (the same good intentions that lead to hell) or out of any malignant motives, is just monkey business that will not end well.
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Madan
June 11, 2020
“My angst is only that when someone says “never before” or “for the first time”, that becomes the WORD for future generations, many of whom are never going to hear a pre-Raja era song.” – This I agree with. But this also does not make it necessarily true that there are NO never befores to be credited to Raja. I think this is what Shankar was getting at too. This is over-balancing. One doesn’t have to play DOWN his achievements either just so fans of older composers feel appeased. If he HAS firsts to his credit, we should state it boldly and fearlessly.
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brangan
June 11, 2020
As a bit of amusement, here’s an article that does to MSV what many people do to Raja 😀
https://www.magzter.com/article/Music/FRONTLINE/MSV-The-Legend-of-Music
The reason K Balachander (apparently) chose Raja over MSV for SINDHU BHAIRAVI was (apparently) that this was about a musician’s rise and fall and “interpretations [of ragas] were not needed”
I don’t know if KB really said this or if the MSV-worshipping writer “interpreted” it this way, but… WHAT A LOAD OF BULL!
For one, KB had already moved away from MSV (his last two films were by VS Narasimhan, whose two songs in ACHAMILLAI I love, BTW)
And two, in the 80s, Raja was THE BEST in every possible way – musically, commercial viability-wise…
The statement in this article is as much as disservice to MSV as Raja.
One, you are dissing Raja outright by implying that this film’s requirements did not need “someone as great as MSV”.
And two, there is no harm in saying MSV largely lost his mojo after the 1970s (His last GREAT soundtrack, IMO, was in 1979, NINAITHALE INIKKUM, and one part of me wishes that had been his swan song. What a great ending that would have been to a magnificent career. But another part of me would have missed the one-off beauties like ‘Sippi irukkudhu’, ‘Kanaa kaanum kangal mella’ etc, that came later.)
Artistes do “dry up”, and it’s no shame in admitting to this. It takes nothing away from their achievements.
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Madan
June 11, 2020
BR: KB actually talked about Sindhu Bhairavi and Unnal Mudiyum Thambi at the audio launch of Dhoni (Prakash Raj film). He said for both films when he met Raja, he said you should aim to get national award for this film and Raja said emphatically, “I will”. Raja obviously was present at the launch and did not contradict a single word of KB’s. So this does seem to be an artful misinterpretation of what KB may have said about Sindhu Bhairavi to the author of the article.
But I have seen this attitude from many MSV fans. While MSV himself effortlessly made peace with IR (and even co-composed on a few films) and later with ARR too, many of his fans sit on an ucchi and disdain the work of IR in particular as somehow impure from an aesthetic point of view. Which is a load of BS. Then again, I see ordinary mortals sneer at ARR just because they happen to be IR fans and I laugh.
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brangan
June 11, 2020
Madan: PLEASE do not believe what someone says on a public platform. The fact that Raja did not contradict KB on stage is no guarantee that this is what happened.
When I joined this field, I too thought this way. Oh X always says nice things about Y. They are a mutual appreciation society.
And then you meet X or Y in private and the pent-up bile can be shocking.
There have been times when I have heard someone abuse — choice Tamil abuses — someone they just praised on stage. 😂
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Madan
June 11, 2020
BR: Hahahaha. Too true. However, my point in quoting what KB said was it seems very unlikely then that he went to IR because he felt he didn’t need MSV for an ‘inferior’ project when clearly SB, Rudraveena and Unnal Mudiyum were very ambitious projects.
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Madan
June 11, 2020
BR: On that note, were there ever any unsavoury stories about MSV (other than from pro-TKR camp)? Of the three, he seems to have been the most laidback and jolly one, the one who wore his greatness most lightly. At least as far as the public persona goes but he also made a good comedian in later years.
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Bluehat
June 11, 2020
Some random quotes and definitions…
@Imsai Arasan: ” Panpaattu varalaaru mukkiyam, amacharey…”
Napoleon: “History is a set of lies agreed upon.”
Chesterfield: “History is but a confused heap of facts.”
Marx: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
Wilde: “Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.”
Mencken: “Historian — an unsuccessful novelist.”
Hagiography, a definition: A biography which is uncritically supportive of its subject, often including embellishments or propaganda.
Churchill: “History is written by the victors.”
No wonder “a king of his times” gets his hagiographies.
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KS
June 11, 2020
@brangan:
“And then you meet X or Y in private and the pent-up bile can be shocking.
There have been times when I have heard someone abuse — choice Tamil abuses — someone they just praised on stage”
Your website would reach dizzying levels of popularity if you expanded on this 😀 Maybe you should start a FilmCompanion “After Dark” section covering inside stories and kisu-kisu (with names changed to colorful euphemisms, as in time-honored tradition). Maybe you could even make it members-only and charge a subscription fee. After all, there is only so much we can take of “working with him was a life-changing experience”-type drivel.
@Madan:
The advantage in cricket is that there is a lot more data available, so the higher level of quantification comes in the way of making vague claims and passing them off as facts. The yardsticks, whatever you use, would generally be more precise than in music. This ambiguity can be exploited in music to stitch any kind of story you want, and this is done all the time in puff pieces. If all else fails, you can go the true-Scotsman way, and change definitions to suit your claim. Like you can dismiss previous efforts as facile and inauthentic, while Ilayaraja’s folk is the first one to have “soul”. Thats the kind of subtle debasement I’m talking about. Tribute pieces are all filled with such fluff all the time, and it gets really tiresome, but I’m not sure there’s any other way to go. As for the zero-sum game depending on people and not the music, sure. Thats what a zero-sum game is, as a concept.
Also, I don’t believe we need the creator’s explicit approval to read political undertones in works of art. Often it might just be unconscious on the part of the artist, but in hindsight and with some perspective, could still make for interesting analysis. Most artists give really dull interviews and cliched opinions, because they might be more comfortable subtly expressing themselves through their art rather than articulating their thoughts in words. So it doesn’t matter what Ilayaraja thinks about the Dalit-vs-Goliath story spun around him.
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Arun Pradeep
June 11, 2020
“But in the process, we shouldn’t forget journalistic rigour”. This is extremely important. Unfortunately this has gone for a toss in journalism in general nowadays, and in culture writing even more so. I think it’s because doing it, ensuring that every word you write or speak meets a certain standard you set for yourself, is hard work. A lot of people are not willing to put in this work because it’s not fashionable. Worse, they don’t even think it’s necessary. At the risk of going a bit OT, reading this article brought to mind something the US State Department said, when the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu had expressed anger at the way Barack Obama, who was then US President, had been treating him. (The US and Israel have a very close relationship but Obama and Netanyahu never got along). Prior to the meeting, Netanyahu, who was facing an election in Israel, had spoken about his opposition to the two-states solution. This helped him win over hardliners on the ultra-right and win another term as PM. The State Dept spokesman said, when asked about Netanyahu’s concerns at the way he was treated by Obama, “Words have meaning. Actions have consequences.”
This is so true. So many people write stuff they don’t even mean. Or they don’t care. Thank you for writing this article. High time someone called these guys out.
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Madan
June 11, 2020
“The yardsticks, whatever you use, would generally be more precise than in music. ” – That is true but if you are aware of the genres being discussed, aware of the subject matter, then you can make out whether a statement is way off the mark or whether it is at least in the subjectivity wiggle room. My thumb rule: if it is in the latter, let it go. There is no need to invest in a narrative that accuses such opinions of some sort of agenda. But if it is flat out wrong, call it out. There ARE flat out wrong statements, like how BR pointed out the article claiming that IR was the first to use his own voice to bring a raw dimension to playback singing but this was already done by S D Burman. Now the author of that article can later backpedal and say, “No I didn’t mean THAT even if I don’t know what I really mean” but that statement by itself is factually wrong. OTOH the statement that IR was the first to combine Indian classical, Western classical and Tamil folk is not wrong. It only depends on how broadly you want to interpret the term Western classical but you can’t blame someone for following a narrower interpretation than yours.
“Also, I don’t believe we need the creator’s explicit approval to read political undertones in works of art” – Provided we don’t descend into cancel culture and take the creator to task for things he did not explicitly say. Implicitly yellam Left will call South Pole as North and accuse you of being bigoted then what will you do? Any implicit reading of politics in art should not be taken too seriously, is my point. Yezhdharthukku enna vaana yezhdhi tholaiyungal but don’t expect the artist to respond or engage with that critique if he never flat out said that which you say he did. He doesn’t have to and shouldn’t have to engage.
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Honest Raj
June 12, 2020
Madan: OTOH TMK cannot bring himself to digest Raja transposing a different tune on Mari Mari. Now you cannot lament a ‘lost musical revolution’ and also apply rules to stymie that revolution at one and the same time, it doesn’t work that way.
Well said!
BTW, why was “Oram Po” banned?
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brangan
June 12, 2020
There is one theory that the song was banned because it sounded like a rowdy, eve-teasing anthem. (And in this case, it’s certainly the kind of song that had never been heard before. Especially the situation where they knock down the old woman and instead of apologising, they say ” Aey kezhavi, vandi varadhu kannukku therila? Oramaa poyaen!”)
There’s another theory that the old guard of the Tamil film establishment resented Raja’s rise. So when this song was written (by Gangai Amaran, I think) as a not-so-veiled celebration of Raja and asking others to make way for him.
“avingalai ellaam odhungi poga sollungada”
“vaangada vandhanam pannungada …”Paalayam pannappuram chinna thaayi peththa magan … varraan doi”
Including a reference to his film: “Kizhakkey pogum rayila kooda mundhi varuven”
This theory goes that the establishment convinced the government to ban the song.
Actually, it did not matter at all. For it was heard EVERYWHERE — just not on radio 😀 😀
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Ravi
June 12, 2020
I recall reading in a Tamizh weekly magazine that “Oram Po” was banned as it could promote eve-teasing!!! More recently, the banning of songs such as “Oram Po” and “Kettele ange” have been regarded as the conspiracy of the Brahminical establishment against Raja. But such critics forget that even songs such as “Aadi velli”, Kelviyin nayagane, Idhazhe Idhazhe were all banned at one time or another.
As for TMK and Mari Mari. No doubt, TMK regards himself as the High Priest of Carnatic music. He once argued in the “Hindu” that instruments such as Saxophone and Key Board do not have a place in Carnatic music as they cannot bring out all the gamakas in the music. On another occasion, in a special edition devoted to Tyagaraja, he criticized the composer for having composed in ragas that are not organically evolved but based purely on scales. (I am no expert on music but this what I could gather from TMK’s arguments. It is possible that my interpretation is flawed).
Regarding the song Mari Mari, much of the debate has been on Raja and his tuning of the Kamboji raga kriti in a different raga. No one seems to have questioned the appropriateness of the character in the movie singing in a public concert a well known composition in a raga different from the original. Especially, since the character is shown as a stickler to tradition.
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Isai
June 12, 2020
Some more information on why Oram Po was banned:
http://www.mayyam.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=795
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brangan
June 12, 2020
After writing this, I began to wonder if there was actually any researched material on all of this history — as opposed to just anecdotal, “IMO” stuff.
I created this link to add these addenda:
If you find interesting things relating to Tamil Film Music, do share links.
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Honest Raj
June 12, 2020
Eve-teasing? It sounds lame because Tamil cinema has churned out such songs over the years.
Speaking of vulgarity in lyrics, I guess MGR films of the 70s belonged to a different league. This one is from “Pachaikkili Muthucharam”:
Kannil aadum maankani kaiyil aadumo … Naanae tharum naalum varum yenindha avasaramo?
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Madan
June 12, 2020
On the general thread of this discussion, found this comment by an RDB fan on Youtube w.r.t Suhani Chandni Raatein:
“That piano piece is marvellous…in Mukti-1977…i dont think any ever md had a thought of adding such a jazz piece in movies during those times”
Ugh! That’s not jazz piano. Louis Banks played it does not make it jazz.
The video itself is a nice watch. It’s about how Banks got hired in RDB’s troupe. And his playing in the video, which goes way beyond the original parts written for him in the song, is lovely.
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Heisenberg
June 13, 2020
//But I wish he’d mentioned that (“a decaying”) MSV — in MAZHALAI PATTALAM — used Gowri Manohari ragam for the song at the situation when Sumithra realises the author she loves (whose pen name is Gowri Manohari) is actually Vishnu Vardhan//
He did give two examples of Raja’s predecessors and how they handled raagas(KVM, MSV) . And continues that Raja takes baton from them and sets the bar higher. Precisely what your article is about. Not negating his predecessors.
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vijay
June 21, 2020
When movie reviewers also pass off as music critics, when they do lazy research and possess limited knowledge AND let their fandom cloud their writings, what do you get? Puff pieces, where a certain XYZ composer is deemed to have invented everything.
I am yet to read good Tamil film music critique anywhere in print/internet, a vacuum that perhaps nobody will bother to fill, as it is probably somewhere down the pecking order of business in media. No audience for it I guess. The forums and blogs have probably initiated better technical discussions than any so called “professional” film music critique has. And it is not easy to be a good tamil film music critic either, mind you. It requires you to combine history of tamil film music with a modicum of technical knowledge with quite a breadth in listening choices and genre familiarity and an engaging writing style. How many of them out there possess this combination?
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vijay
June 21, 2020
In his lecdem on MSV here Ramesh vinayagam its the nail on how fandom trumps serious musical analysis amongst fans. (Its another matter that he himself is a fanboy 🙂 )
We need more such lecdems to hit the youtube on 50s/60s MDs and for composers of both Tamil and film for the current millennial generation to get some serious education on history and the art of musical analysis which is alien to our culture, especially when it comes to film music
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vijay
June 21, 2020
“I think this is an easily establish-able fact, simply because NO ONE before Raja paid special attention to BGMs. In this case, the “first ever” claim is indisputable.
BGM was mostly seen as a generic “mood creator” in Tamil cinema. I mean, I’m sure you can find the odd example of an evocative bit of BGM here and there (like the title track of PATTINA PRAVESAM), but a lot of the time, I doubt even the greats like KV Mahadevan or MSV even bothered to go beyond stock music.”
BR, careful, I don’t think you have talked to enough MSV fans about this. For instance, if you bump into say YG Mahendran, who is a fanboy and a percussionist himself he will argue that BGm started and stopped with MSV 🙂 In fact there is a video out there of him saying this.
MSV fans usually cite ulagam sutrum vaaliban, pudhiya paravai sivandha mann and many other films.
A lot of the opinions we hold I strongly believe is all about what influenced us in our teen years. Psychologists have said that is the music to which we go back to eventually even if we take detours now and then. We try to be objective but often what we write betrays our fandom 🙂
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vijay
June 21, 2020
Here is another one, ananthu breaking down MSV’s tough sangathis
I would like to see twenty-somethings do this on youtube someday. Not stick to just Anirudh or SN, but try to break down what you like about the past masters, that is after you expend some effort to seek out their creations and familiarize with their works in the first place
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vijay
June 21, 2020
For those who think MSV was all about just classical melodies and little else, have you heard this?
A Jazzi’sh piece that blew my socks off when I first heard it. Go past the recording quality, the visuals and all that and you may unearth more like this…
If any song deserves some restoration then this would be it, don’t see a parallel in HFM of those times
For all his harmony knowledge, I wish IR had taken the baton here and gone deeper into Jazz in his early years where there was a lot to play with in terms of complex harmonies and chords. But somehow we had to wait all the way till Mumbai express in 2005 to get a soundtrack from him that did justice to this genre. Not that I am a big fan of this genre, but it would have been great to see an Indianized Jazz interpretation, esp in TFM
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vijay
June 21, 2020
“Regarding the song Mari Mari, much of the debate has been on Raja and his tuning of the Kamboji raga kriti in a different raga. No one seems to have questioned the appropriateness of the character in the movie singing in a public concert a well known composition in a raga different from the original. Especially, since the character is shown as a stickler to tradition.”
Ravi, ivlo yellam yosikkakoodathu 🙂 BTW, how appropriate how did you find JKB dancing to his own thanni thotti thedi vandha in the same film? 🙂
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Madan
June 21, 2020
“I wish IR had taken the baton here and gone deeper into Jazz in his early years where there was a lot to play with in terms of complex harmonies and chords. But somehow we had to wait all the way till Mumbai express in 2005 to get a soundtrack from him that did justice to this genre” – He did that before too, though, on Day By Day from Honest Raaj as well as Niram Pirithu Parthen from Time. I consider them both more impressive attempts at jazz, if anything, because Niram Pirithu Parthen in particular was giving nods to contemporary jazz trends, the kind of jazz you might hear in a jazz show, and not the cliched idea of jazz ‘genre’ that people who don’t listen to jazz may have (which was what Kurangu Kaiyil Maalai sounded like to me, as good as the percussion work was). And don’t get me started on Poo Poothathu which is more sappy than a Kenny G-Toni Braxton song could be. The problem is when Raja does Western too authentically, it goes over people’s heads because they are not used to it, they don’t have a framework to relate to it. So he has to either do cliche stuff like Ram Pam Pam or his usual Indo-Western kalandha saadam. I think if you confronted Raja and asked him to name one regret, it would be that he couldn’t do what all he could have with Western. He liked to blame it on the so-called incompetence of local Prasad studio musicians but I think he knows deep down it’s also that he could take the audience only this far and no further.
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Madan
June 21, 2020
“If any song deserves some restoration then this would be it, don’t see a parallel in HFM of those times” – To me, it sounds very much of a piece with CR jazzy/jazz-based songs or other composers’ imitations of CR like Ravi’s Baar Baar Dekho (or Ajeeb Dastan Hai Yeh of SJ). What I find more jazz-like is the singing, the beautiful legato of LR Eswari, though I might add it sounds more like Elvis than jazz singing. SJ also wanted that Elvis sound on Rafi’s voice and attempted it on Aja Re Aa Zara a couple of years after this song.
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Honest Raj
June 21, 2020
BTW, how appropriate how did you find JKB dancing to his own thanni thotti thedi vandha in the same film?
“Mari Mari” comes before the vazhukkivizhundhufying of JKB and “Thanni Thotti” comes after that. Valid question, no?
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Madan
July 1, 2020
Only loosely related to the foregoing discussion but I compiled a list of 10 Raja songs I discovered only through forums such as this one here.
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Honest Raj
July 4, 2020
@Madan: Glad to see that two of the ten songs are from my moniker-sake film. 🙂
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Madan
July 4, 2020
Honest Raj: Ha! I do think it’s quite an underrated album.
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Sunny
May 10, 2021
This is kinda wrong. The title song of Jawaani Diwani by RD Burman had one of the most complex, interesting scale changes. This was also one of the first indian songs to do so. RDB paved the path on which people like Raja walked. Also Salil Chowdhury was an exponent in Western classical.
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Madan
May 10, 2021
“The title song of Jawaani Diwani by RD Burman had one of the most complex, interesting scale changes.” – Jawaani Diwani was after Mere Jeevan Saathi or Tum Jo Mil Gaye Ho which also had complex interludes. Rahi Tha Main Awara also had very interesting twists in the second interlude/antara “Jee chahtha hain mera”. With that said, modal interchange is not the sole preserve of Western classical and not necessarily an indication of incorporating Western classical into Indian music.
As for Salilda, it may be that he revealed more of his mastery over Western classical in Bengali music but in Hindi, he was vey restrained in using it. I learnt yesterday that Pyarelalji has written a symphony which was even performed in Leipzig to a mostly European audience. But he was either not ‘allowed’ to use this know how in Hindi songs or he, like others at the time, did not see the possibilities to marry Western and Indian that Ilayaraja did.
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