Music And Movies

As I had promised in my earlier post, we will now talk about a music director of whom it can be said that he crossed all boundaries with utmost ease. Rasayya, aka as Raja, later rechristened as Illayaraja, is a music director who is held in high esteem in all the South Indian languages. Breaking through in Tamil with the refreshing music of 'Annakili', Illayaraja spread his tentacles all over the South and is still giving some amazing melodies in all these languages. In terms of quantity, his output in Kannada was the lowest amongst the four languages. Still, his songs hold a pride of place in the hearts of Kannadigas. A song, 'Nagu Endidhe' by Janaki, was playing one one of the FM Channels as I was driving. I had no clue on the details of this song like the movie, music director etc but I didn't have an iota of doubt about the music director. This wonderful and complex melody had the stamp of Raja written all over it. I went searching for this song without knowin

It was I in a earlier post who wrote about the difficulty of music crossing boundaries and it is going to be me who will now write about music directors who crossed boundaries rather easily !! While I would still argue that musical barriers are more difficult to break compared to other arts, it must be accepted that only in the case of music is language redundant !! If a Japanese person like the same American movie that you do, it will be very difficult to convey what you liked about the movie if there is no common language. In case both of you liked the same English song, you just need to sing it and communication is immediately established. I have seen this when we went to a karaoke in Tokyo along with our Japanese client and sang 'Hotel California' together. None of those who sang that day had any clue on how to sing a song but that didn't stop us enjoying the song together. In that way, music is a language by itself. In India, film music is most common language in the