Ilaiyaraaja

Known as Ilaiyaraaja, Gnanathesikan is an Indian artist who works primarily in Tamil and Telugu. Ilaiyaraaja is widely regarded as one of the greatest Indian music composers, credited with introducing Western musical sensibilities into the mainstream Indian musical film industry. Having composed more than 7,000 songs, provided film scores for more than 1,000 movies, and performed in more than 20,000 concerts, Ilaiyaraaja is reputed to be the most prolific composer in the world.

In Chennai, Ilaiyaraaja worked in a band for hire involved in performing music for various stage shows and formal occasions. Ilaiyaraaja also worked as a session guitarist and keyboardist/organist for film music composers and directors such as Salil Chowdhury from West Bengal, who often recorded music in Madras. Later, the Kannada film composer G. K. Venkatesh hired him as an assistant, an event that marked his entry into film music composition and directing. He assisted that music director in 200 film projects, mostly in Kannada. During that stint, he learned the practical methods of orchestration. He would hone his compositional ability through frequent experimentation accomplished by persuading session musicians to play, during their break times, the scores he wrote. Ilaiyaraaja's break as a full-fledged composer came in 1976 when film producer Panchu Arunachalam decided to commission him to compose the songs and film score for a Tamil-language film called Annakkili. The resulting soundtrack, together with others that quickly followed, earned Ilaiyaraaja recognition for his adaptation of Tamil folk poetry and music to popular film music orchestration. Ilaiyaraaja helped reinvigorate Tamil film music, which, by the mid-1970s, experienced a lack of creative ideas. As demand mounted for his 'new' sound, Ilaiyaraaja emerged by the mid-1980s as the leading film composer and music director in the South Indian film industry. Besides Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada films, he has scored music for Hindi (or Bollywood) film productions such as Sadma, Lajja, and Cheeni Kum. He has worked with noted Indian poets and lyricists such as Gulzar, Kannadasan, Vairamuthu, T. S. Rangarajan, and film directors as K. Balachander, K. Vishwanath, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, and Mani Ratnam.