It’s the old art-versus-artist thing, and I know people have differing views on this thorny subject. But if the man isn’t like that, well, what can one do? Ideally, yes, I would love it if Ilayaraja posts regular Instagram pictures while making googly eyes at his pet kittens. But then, I also don’t expect composers-or any artists, really-to behave the way I want them to.
I’m also not saying I liked the tone, or the words he used. Why do we care if he is likeable if his music (which is what we are concerned about) is? I’m not saying what he said is right.
But why? We cannot impose our views of “good behaviour” on others. One word that kept coming up in light of the recent outrage is “gracious”. My music is all that matters.” But that’s why Great Men are so fascinating, with all their complications and contradictions. And yet, Ilayaraja so often settled for maane/ thaene filler-words, almost as if saying, “No one gives a crap about the words. It’s one of the great sakhi/thozhi songs, gorgeously written by Kannadasan. Ilayaraja has often said one of his favourite songs is ‘ Maalai Pozhudhin Mayakkathile’, from Bhagyalakshmi. The disrespectful attitude towards lyrics is one of the most baffling aspects of the Ilayaraja persona, given that he grew up venerating Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy and SD Burman. It’s unlike this other director who told me how Ilayaraja insisted on changing the lyrics of a song, which left him very upset- and again, went on to praise the maestro on a stage. Take it or leave it.” This is unlike the top music composer who dismissed Ilayaraja as someone who worked with the same set of “rural beats”-and yet, went on to praise the maestro on a stage. He ’s basically saying, “This is who I am. But I prefer this brutal attitude to that of others who harbour different opinions of the maestro in private but praise him in public. There’s always been a cheerful lack of filter, whether you want to call it “arrogance” or whatever else. But then, Ilayaraja has always been this way. For one, he doesn’t say nasty things about the new-generation players. But outwardly, at least, he is a celebrity whom we love to love. Maybe all that effort of smiling and keeping a game face in public means that he goes home, melts his racquets and performs voodoo rituals in front of the posters of his opponents. I don’t know what Federer is like in real life. It’s a result of what I like to call the Roger Federer-isation of celebrity, which has become the dominant mode of engagement and judgment. It’s not okay if the genius himself calls himself a genius. “ How can someone say something like this?” is really another way of saying “ Shouldn’t one be careful about what you say in public?” And that’s where a lot of people who have chosen to outrage over Ilayaraja’s Cinema Express interview are coming from, as well. Where the director (a huge Ilayaraja fan, BTW) was coming from, of course, was the modesty angle. (And I say this as someone who thinks many of them have been unfairly forgotten, given the relentless focus on Ilayaraja.) But you don’t need to be a genius to see that none of them is able to match your output (in terms of number of albums per year), your hit rate, the fact that all the top directors want to work with you, and the fact that yours is the sound that has come to define the period. The point isn’t whether any other composer of the time made “good” music.
“How can someone say something like this?”īut then, why not? That period was the Ilayaraja era, right? Any artist worth his salt-let alone a paradigm-altering genius like Ilayaraja-is going to be able to see the other artists around him, compare their work with his own, and make such an assessment. One director ( not the one you are thinking of) told me about the time he took a walk with the composer in the mid-1980s, and he was startled when Ilayaraja sweepingly declared, “Like there was a Bach era and a Mozart era, this will be known as the Ilayaraja era.” The director, who is not usually given to self-praise, said he was startled. On record, no one will say much, but “off record”, the beans will start to spill.
Whenever I have run into (either casually or for the purposes of an interview) someone who ’s worked with Ilayaraja, I’ve asked them about the maestro. In the sixteen-plus years I have been writing about cinema, one thing has remained constant.