Eight hundred and forty eight movies down the line, legendary music composer Ilaiyaraaja admits that he’s only served his audience pickles and poppadums.
“I have yet to serve them the entire meal,” he smiles. He is in the city composing music for two films, ‘Cheeni Kum’ starring Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu by debutante director Balakrishnan and ‘Shiva’ directed by Ram Gopal Varma.
He’s planning a few different styles for ‘Cheeni Kum’ - “There will be romantic numbers and lots of melodic, orchestrated numbers,” he says.
One of the first musicians to emphasise the importance of orchestration while composing music, he synthesised Western and Indian instruments.
“My music is very spontaneous; it comes from the heart. I can never plan it out. In fact, there has been a scientific study done saying that Mozart’s music develops brain cells because his music was straight from his heart,” he says.
Guru to A R Rahman, Ilaiyaraaja says he always knew Rahman was a bright spark. “That’s why I took him into my troupe! My keyboard player was drunk so I told my team to get me a player from somewhere. They came back saying a little boy was there - I was okay with the 11-year-old!” he smiles. From placing his fingers on the keyboard to helping him play, he’s proud of his ‘little spark’ who has sure has gone places.
The maestro is set about his views on composers today; “There are no music composers today - they are just arrangers! Today’s music will never go down the ages. It is only here for today and will not stay,” he says. It might just be two Bollywood movies currently but he says, “I don’t mind composing for more movies here but there should be good enough work for me!”
r_preeti@dnaindia.net
