MSV: His Music and his times - Part 14: A new competitor

Illayaraja, who entered Tamil film music through 'Annakili' represents the biggest discontinuity in Indian Film Music thought. This may be difficult for people to accept. R D Burman or Rahman may come to your mind whenever people talk about a discontinuity. So let me put forth my hypothesis on why I consider Raja as a discontinuity and a break from our Indian film music tradition,

We have already seen how both Hindi film music and South Indian film music both depended on Classical music of North and South respectively in their formative years. One of the important features of Indian Classical music is the centrality of the singer / instrumentalist. There have been some great accompaniment artist but even they are subservient to the main artist. This spills over into film music as well and for long the tune and the singer were of importance. The music director was basically a person who could set some wonderful tunes. They did not expect the music director to be well versed in orchestration. Orchestration was left to assistants. (Anil Biswas talks about one such talented assistant of his. It is also well known the Pugazhendi did most of the orchestration for K V Mahadevan). This meant that the major musical ideas resided in the tune and hence the singer of paramount importance. That is why we had singers who dominated their industry pushing even the music directors to shade. Lata dominated Hindi film industry, Gantasala dominated Telugu film industry and Jesudas was the king of Malayalam film song. Even when R D Burman arrived and the orchestration got a new fillip, the tune and rhythm were still the king. Kishore's and Asha's voices were central to R D Burman's songs. I want to look at this phenomenon from a different angle and say that all the music directors gave their best musical ideas to the song (which ofcourse includes the rhythm of the song). The ideas embedded in the orchestration were limited. Secondly we can say that in true Indian music tradition, the orchestration was present to 'support' the tune and hence it was enmeshed with the tune.

Raja's thought was different. His idea of a song was more akin the idea of symphony of western classical music. No, I am not suggesting that Raja's songs are symphonies or some such. Just that Raja's conception of a film song closely mirrored the ideas of western classical music. If you listen to a symphony you will notice that while there is a central melody, the symphony is not just the melody. There are multiple harmonic strains either running in parallel with the melody or supplementing the melody. None of the threads can be discarded without affecting the overall effect. In essence, in the symphony there was no central instrument. Everyone had a part to play: some more and some less, but it was just a part. No one was the pillar. Second, the symphony was  viewed as an organic whole. In the sense that musical ideas were spread throughout the symphony unlike Indian music where the ideas were more in the tune. Raja thought of his song as an organic whole while many of us thought of it as tune and orchestration. In Raja's songs the ideas were spread throughout of the song and the quality of ideas for the orchestration was in no way inferior to the quality of ideas embedded in the tune.

Let me illustrate this with a MSV song and a Raja song. Both are duets, both are melodies, both were released around the same time and both are nice to hear but their overall approach is very different.

Here is 'gangai yamunai' from 'Imayam'



Here us 'mayile mayile' from 'Kadvul Amaitha Medai'



I will not dissect this but try thinking this way; If you remove the orchestration from 'gangai yamunai' how much do you lose? How much do you lose in 'mayile mayile'?

This Western Classical music line of thinking also meant that every instrument and voice had its place in the song and the place was fixed. Which meant that no one, including the lead singers, was allowed to do anything of their own. They had to do exactly what was written for them. Nothing more, nothing less. This was because Raja was weaving an intricate tapestry and every thread had a particular role to play in the design and the dependence of the pattern of each thread on other was so tight that even a small deviation of one thread could destroy the whole pattern. So spontaneity of instrumentalists or singers was out of question in this approach. What the approach lost in terms of this spontaneity it more than gained by the complex pattern it wove and by the extraordinary precision this approach gave rise to. Again we will look at two distinct songs to understand this difference.

Here is the famous 'engeyum eppodhum' from 'Nanithale Inikkum'



A similar club song from the Telugu movie 'Yugandhar', 'naa paruvam'



If you listen carefully you can clearly hear the sort of independence the instrumentalists get in the MSV song as well as the liberty SPB gets. In Raja's Telugu song everything is regimented including the pauses. Also observe the ideas inherent in the interludes. In MSV's case the ideas are fairly simple with the 'aadu paambe' being the theme and other ideas being brought it but they don't really form a complete whole. In Raja's song you will observe one idea following the other and everything together forming an unified whole.

The other important change that Raja brought in was the multitude of genres with their authenticity intact. Not only in Tamil film music but also in other languages, the film songs remained film songs and when a music director had to give a folk song he would generally mask his own standard song as a folk song or bring in a folk song directly which will not have this stamp. Ofcourse exceptions like 'thazhayam poo mudichi' exist but overall whenever the music director was asked to give a song in a genre he was not familiar with, then the way out was either to borrow directly from that particular genre or to change some orchestration bits to make it sound like it was in another genre while actually song would be standard Indian film song. The deep understanding of each genre and his ability to construct songs keeping the grammar of that genre intact and yet leaving his stamp on the song was something not done on such a scale as what Raja did. Neither by music director before him or later.

In that way Raja represent a big discontinuity in Indian film music. (After him, Indian film music went a different track, but not forward, musically, which we will not discuss here.)

What I have said till now was not realized by anyone when Raja entered the scene. No one: neither the music critics nor the music lovers understood this. I must confess neither did I and whatever I write now was not the opinion that I held when Raja appeared on the scene. An opinion that majority held when Raja appeared was that this man knew his folk songs and could mix some western elements into his folk songs. Or that he was good at orchestration. No one understood that Raja's musical thought in its entirety.  The reason why I wrote so much about Raja was to highlight the enormity of the challenge that MSV faced. By trivializing that challenge, we would be doing injustice to both of them.

Raja had great respect for MSV but his musical thought was diametrically opposite to that of MSV (and to that most Indian music directors). MSV was a tunesmith, the tune was central to his song. He believed in giving freedom to his instrumentalists and singers, his tunes were simple, he believed in the power of lyrics, his orchestration was a bit hazy. Raja on the other hand saw the tune as just one part of a whole, not as the only important part. Neither singers nor musicians had any freedom. They had to play their part and no improvisation was allowed. His tunes were complex. Raja believed that the tune should convey the intended emotion. The lyrics were secondary. (He has never stated that but this is my conclusion based on my observations). So this must have been a clash of opposites but it was not seen as such initially.

The impact of MSV's music on Tamil films was so high that Raja had no choice but to structure some of his initial songs in the MSV mold, especially when he had to tune for Sivaji's films. It is not surprising that everyone thought that Raja was a sort of successor to MSV because he could tune like MSV. This song for example is put in the MSV basket by many people. 'sindhu nadhikarai oram' from 'Naladhoru Kudumbam'



The orchestration is typical Raja but the tune is MSVish.

Or this song, 'anthapurathil oru maharani' from 'Deepam'. One can discern the MSV 'touch' in the tune.



Or this song, 'endhan pon vanname' from 'Naan Vaazha Vaippen'



Such was MSV's grip on Tamil film music that for Sivaji's films and probably for the films of older directors Raja had to give music which had the flavor of the day while he could experiment more with the film of new comers. In essence Raja's entry was not dramatic nor did he replace MSV immediately. Raja's ascend was a slow process and happened over a period of time. In this period MSV kept giving music for a lot of movies. In the next episode we will talk about the music of MSV after Raja's entry into the scene.

(To check out the real Raja from the MSVish Raja you may want to hear this song, 'thirutheril varum silaiyo' from the same movie, 'Naan Vaazhavaipen'

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