The Isaignani: India's most decorated film composer, who took Tamil cinema's sound global with an orchestra behind him and a synthesizer under his fingers.
MOODS · orchestral · cinematic · sweeping · nostalgic · melodic · romantic · lush · classic Tamil film · warm · expansive · reverent · masterful
BIOGRAPHY
Ilaiyaraaja, born Gnanathesigan, is an Indian composer, arranger, conductor and multi-instrumentalist whose career in Indian cinema, mostly Tamil but also Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi film, spans over 49 years. He has composed more than 5000 songs and scored close to 1000 films across nine languages, debuting in 1976 with Annakili, a soundtrack that introduced a new sound to Tamil film music.
He was among the first Indian film composers to bring Western classical harmony and string arrangement into Indian film scoring, and in 1986 became the first Indian composer to record a film soundtrack using a computer. In 2025 he became the first Asian and first Indian film composer to compose, record and perform a full Western classical symphony live in London.
WHY THEY'RE COOL
Ilaiyaraaja's catalog reads like a history of Indian film music's modernization: Western orchestral harmony grafted onto Tamil melody, the country's first computer-recorded film score, and, in 2006, Thiruvasagam in Symphony, described as the first Indian oratorio. A 2013 CNN-IBN poll named him India's greatest music composer of all time, and the BBC's international poll placed his song 'Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu' fourth among the world's most popular songs ever, voted on across 155 countries. His honors include the Padma Bhushan, the Padma Vibhushan, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and five National Film Awards, and his influence reaches from A.R. Rahman to Western pop and hip-hop artists.
GEORGE'S PLAYS
First time on the station.
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