Some artists leave a mark. A few become legends. And then there are the rare ones who were sent here by and for something greater. Ilaiyaraaja is one of those rarer. His creativity feels limitless, his work refuses to age, and his music is everywhere once you start listening. Be it in our homes, on our roads, in our celebrations or in grief, and even in our silences. For many, he is god - in the language of sound. Not just music.
Ilaiyaraaja’s music changes the air you breathe. A few bars of 'Ilaya Nila' can stop you mid-sentence, 'Anjali Anjali' can pull at a place in your chest you thought had long healed, and the violins in 'Azhage Azhage' can carry you to that strange space between longing and contentment. It feels as if he wrote foreground feelings, the kind that become yours in ways you can’t explain.
His music is like a map of where we’ve been and who we’ve been. In one song, you hear the pulse of a village festival — nadaswaram and thavil cutting through the smell of fresh jasmine flowers and roasted groundnuts. In another, you feel the sway of a crowded bus on a winding hill road, the driver humming along to a cassette that’s been rewound a hundred times.
If you grew up with his music, you know exactly what I mean.
His songs were the hum from transistor radios in sleepy towns, floating over the smell of filter coffee or the sounds at the street-side tea-kadai, and the crackle of a morning newspaper.
He gave us rain songs that smelt of wet earth, lullabies that felt like home, and love songs that could break your heart but still leave you feeling whole. His music has walked with us through every season of life - the brimming joy of first love, the ache of loss, the quiet resolve of starting over, the restless yearning of ambition, the easy laughter of friendship, and the deep contentment of finding our place in the world.
And if you have never followed Tamil cinema, you may still have been touched by Ilaiyaraaja without even knowing it. That haunting lullaby “Surmayee Ankhiyon Mein” from Sadma began life as 'Kanne Kalaimaane' in Moondram Pirai. The lilting “Neele Neele Ambar Par” from 'Kalaakaar' was originally made in Tamil as 'Ilaya Nila Pozhigiradhe'. The tender strains of the title track of 'Cheeni Kum’ were first woven into 'Mouna Raagam', and even Paa carried the soul of his earlier 'Putham Pudhu Kaalai'.
When Ilaiyaraaja entered Tamil cinema in 1976 with Annakili, it was as if the wind had shifted, carrying with it the scent of wet earth and jasmine from village courtyards. The music was alive and daring, weaving folk drums, flutes, and simple, haunting melodies into the fabric of everyday life. Annakili was a quiet revolution - it took Tamil cinema out of the polished drawing rooms of the urban elite and placed it firmly in the heartbeats of rural homes.
And over the decades, his music has stood as a quiet witness to social and technological changes - the rise of television, the migration from joint families to nuclear homes or even single person households, cultural and linguistic changes in our societal fabric, the cassette boom of the 1980s, the arrival of CDs in the 1990s, and now the boundless reach of streaming.
He has given us over 8,500 film songs and scored the music for more than 1,500 films — a number so vast it almost defies imagination until you realise how deeply each one lives in people’s hearts. And yet, he has never been content to stay within one world. He became the first Indian to work with the London Symphony Orchestra, carrying the pulse of Tamil soil into one of the grandest musical halls in the world.
His music could travel anywhere and still belong. And travel it did - finding a home not just in Chennai or Madurai, but in Toronto, Dubai, Durban, San Francisco, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur - wherever Tamil hearts have carried it, serving as a cultural anchor for the diaspora.
And it wasn’t just cinema. Away from the silver screen, Ilaiyaraaja has worked with devotional and philosophical works that feels deeply personal. His 'Thiruvasagam in Symphony' took ancient Tamil verses and wrapped them in orchestral arrangements that felt both vast and intimate, as if the sacred words were travelling through time to sit quietly beside you. Albums like 'How to Name It?' and 'Nothing But Wind' showed us what happened when he let his curiosity roam free - music that could be playful, meditative, and unbounded by genre, carrying the same emotional truth that made his film songs timeless.
He will fearlessly place a thavil in the middle of a pop ballad, or let a full Carnatic alapana bloom in a commercial film song without apology. His melodies brings the same care to the unseen corners of music - the background scores for grief, suspense, or those fragile moments when characters are alone with themselves. His sad songs don’t just wallow; they console, as though they’ve come to sit alongside us, until the worst of it passes.
Listen to 'Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu' and you’ll hear folk drums and Western brass talking to each other like old friends. In 'Janani Janani', every note is placed with the care of temple bells rung in perfect sequence. He seems to effortlessly mix Carnatic discipline and Western harmony - making them like siblings in sync together, until you forget they were ever different. Even nature shows up in his music - the rustle of leaves in Pani Vizhum Malar Vanam, the wind that sighs across strings, the rain that seems to fall exactly on cue.
He has conjured music that dances barefoot in village courtyards as easily as it moves in glittering ballroom beats — from rustic folk rhythms like 'Thanni Thotti Thedi Vantha' to electrifying dance numbers such as 'Aasai Nooruvagai' and 'Aattama Therottama', his genius touches every pulse of life.
This is not a commentary on his life or his views on the world - it is simply about the music, and the place it holds in mine and millions of his fans. A song like 'Thenpaandi Cheemayile' can mean one thing to you when you’re twenty and something entirely different when you’re fifty - and both will be true. That’s what happens when music is built on emotional truth rather than trends.
For me, his music has always been more than just something to listen to. It’s where I go when I need to feel lighter, or steadier, or simply heard. It’s the quiet, invisible friend who never interrupts, never judges, never asks for explanations. Some days it’s the shoulder I lean on, some days it’s the hand that nudges me forward. And somehow, without a single word, it knows exactly what to say.
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