Ilayaraja
He debuted as a composer in 1976 with Annakili and has written something north of seven thousand songs since, which is a number that stops meaning anything once you say it out loud. Easier to think of it this way: if you grew up in a Tamil or Telugu household anywhere in the world, his music was in the room whether you chose it or not. These are my frames his concert in San Jose, September 2016.
ome composers score films. Ilaiyaraaja scored a couple of generations. He started in 1976 with Annakili and never really stopped, over seven thousand songs across languages, built from a combination that should not have worked... Carnatic ragas sitting next to a Western string section, folk rhythms under an oboe line, Bach showing up in a village song. He never made either tradition apologise for the other. That is the whole trick, and nobody else has done it quite the same way since. malaymail In September 2016 he brought it to San Jose for two nights at the Event Center, one program in Telugu and one in Tamil, backed by a full live orchestra. What I remember most is not the stage. It was the sound of a few thousand people singing the opening line before the orchestra got there. Everyone in that room was hearing something from a different decade of their own life.
ver twenty five thousand songs, four decades, National Awards, a Padma Bhushan, and none of it has done anything to the way she carries herself on stage. No dancers, no spectacle, nothing to prop up the performance. She sings, she folds her hands, she looks a little surprised that so many people came.
