‘His music is a sanctuary’: The magic of Ilaiyaraaja’s melodies and symphonies
Ilaiyaraaja ubiquitous. Anyone raised in any land that breathes the winds of Tamil music knows that. His melodies are more than just songs; they are lifelong companions, shape-shifting with the listener’s needs - a father’s wisdom, a teacher’s lesson, a friend’s warmth, a child’s wonder. His music is a sanctuary where you purge your sins, cleanse your soul, stand before yourself - stripped of pretence - question your biases, and unlearn patterns forged by society.
Here is Ilaiyaraaja.
At 14, he was immersed in music, travelling across South India with his brother. He might not have thought of it that way, but his ‘work’ had already begun. And yet, fast-forward past the decades of revolutionising Tamil music, past the 1,000 films, 7,000 songs, and immeasurable cultural, philosophical, and political imprints - cut to 2025, and he is now 81.
If this were a feature film, a screenwriter would do what screenwriters do: frame him in sepia tones, retired, perhaps tending to a garden like Vito Corleone, basking in a peaceful life after music, after work. The old genius at rest, the yesteryear legend who has supposedly moved on - for is that not how
it’s supposed to be?
Ilaiyaraaja has always defied templates: expectation, structure, and label. He questions the structure that dictates when a man should stop and when an artist should fade into memory. And so, at 81, what does he do? He composes Valiant, a four-movement symphony, and premieres it in London’s Eventim Apollo Theatre, becoming the first-ever Indian composer to present a full-length Western classical symphony in the UK, conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - as if to remind the world that his genius is neither confined to the past nor a single form.
Each time you attempt to define and hold him still in your grasp, he slips through your fingers - like water - laughing at your desperate need to categorise and contain. You think his legacy is his film music? He composes a Western classical symphony. You think his strength lies in fusing Indian and Western traditions? He composes in pure symphonic form. You assume men in their 80s must reconcile with diminishing faculties? He writes intricate compositions over a month, displaying razor-sharp concentration and physical stamina.
Ilaiyaraaja scoffs at capitalism’s divisions between work and leisure, at society’s rules designed to keep well-oiled machine of civilisation running. For him, music is not work. It is not an industry, a transaction, or a means to an end.
Music is life itself. Or it’s other way around.
People marvel at how he defies age to create, perform, and compose - still processing his music through those familiar factory filters of productivity and efficiency. But no, he is not working. He is not being productive. He is...being. He is an artist in constant play, a spiritualist in perpetual wonder. And therein lies the secret, it seems.
For Ilaiyaraaja, creation and discovery are the same. Connoisseurs and commoners alike enjoy his songs. By his admission, he always seeks perfection, which may come across as arrogance to his critics.
It took him a lifetime to fight the social demons of his early life. Music alone soothed him, and he held on to it as the straw that would help him overcome hurdles with creativity. His belief in himself and his music often made him vulnerable to people taking potshots, misconstruing his authority for irreverence.
He worked with nearly all the big-wig producers, directors and actors. And most of them would have a story about how his single-minded devotion to his music-making abilities came in the way of his professional relationships. There have been spats galore. There have been reconciliations, too, over time.
Ilaiyaraaja comes as a package: his love for his music, his outspokenness, his nature to call a spade a spade, his quirks and the eccentricities of a genius. You take it all.