Maestro ilaiyaraaja news & titbits

[rajsekar]

During the London concert, it was very interesting to see Maestro's facial expression whenever singers missed the beat or made an obvious mistake. He made Chinmayee, Madhu Balakrishnan and Sailaja repeat certain lines after the song rendition was over. I don't think, anyone has heard of such things in a big music concert. In fact, Maestro made this particular comment several times during the concert - "We cannot fix things in a concert but could be corrected while recording in a studio". This doesn't come as a surprise to Hubbers who know Maestro's stringent conditions for 100% perfection. The truth is that Maestro was way ahead of his times and the Tamil film world even in 1977. SPB mentioned this fact very beautifully after singing "Ilaya Nila". SPB said that this musical composition, guitar notes and the tune for "Ilaya Nila" was futuristic in 1982 and the song is a hit even in 2013. SPB went on to say how a Hindi music director literally copied the same tune and delivered a bad job which speaks volumes of how Maestro composed this piece in an instant in 1982. SPB said that this song has never been rendered perfectly in any concert without sufficient rehearsals and he even took quite some years to master the flow and the rhythm of this song. Maestro didn’t like when SPB hummed during the last guitar note of this song.

Now looking back at 1982, when R Sundarajan directed the movie, he would have never thought of getting such mega hits from Maestro. I am sure, Maestro would have churned out the tune instantly or few tunes after listening to the song situation. Sundarajan would have picked one tune which went on to become the biggest hit. At the same time, many directors cannot cope up with Maestro’s way of working because they want more flexibility and control over the music director. Ratnam and Bharathiraaja are classic examples. I have just started to read Ratnam’s biographical book “Conversations with Mani Ratnam” which is a fascinating book on how Ratnam thinks and operates. There are plenty of references to Maestro and how he helped Ratnam during his beginning years in Tamil film. I will post my comments after completing the book. Ratnam’s book really gives an insight on how two creative and futuristic persons could work together.