ILAYARAJA

            ILAYARAJA      

 Birth name Gnanadesikan Also known as Ilaiyaraaja,Raja Born 

2 June 1943 (1943-06-02) (age 67) Origin Theni, Tamil Nadu, 

India Genres Film score, world music Occupations Film score 

composer, lyricist, music director, songwriter, singer, conductor,

 instrumentalist and Film producer Instruments Vocals, (playback 

singing), guitar, keyboard, harmonium, piano Years active 1976–present                                 

 Ilayaraja was born on 2nd June 1943 in Pannaipuram, a little hamlet Pannaipuram ,near Madurai,Tamil Nadu

 . Hewas the third son to Ramasamy and Chinnathayi.   Although he was named as Gnanadesikan hewas affectionately  

called as Rasaiyya. Later in his life, he began to stick the Raja named by his tutor Dhanraj Master under whom he learnt 

a considerable chunk of instrument skills. Finally  Ilayaraja name was given by the tamil film director Panju Arunachalam.

 Later he was known by many titles like "Isaignani" ( given by politician Karunanidhi ),Nadhabramam (God of music creation),

 Ragadevan (king of tunes), Maestro. Ilayaraja entered the tamil film industry and composed his first tamil music in 1976 for

 the movie 'Annakili". The score for this film was a runaway success. It took the audience by surprise as it was totally a different

 kind of music than the other leading music directors at that time.Most of his movies were a instant hit at the stake of the music 

alone. Directors used his name to make profit.He adores the music composers like Ramachandra, Madan Mohan. J S Bach is

 his favorite in the West, and never fails to express his views about him either with the baton or with words, when opportunity 

strikes. With his arrival on the scene, for the first time in India, we got a complete music director who does every thing- composing, 

orchestration, arrangement of instruments and writing notations.Since then he holds a record of composing songs for more than 

750 feature films which include composing songs and also the background track for each one of these movies in Tamil, Telugu, 

Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi and English.In the 1970s in Chennai, Ilaiyaraaja played guitar in a band-for-hire, and worked as a 

session guitarist, keyboardist, and organist for film music composers and directors such as Salil Chowdhury from West Bengal.

[35][36][37] mostly in the Kannada language.[38] As G. K. Venkatesh's assistant, Ilaiyaraaja would orchestrate the melodic outlines

 developed by Venkatesh. During this period, Ilaiyaraaja also began writing his own scores. To hear his compositions, he would 

persuade Venkatesh's session musicians to play excerpts from his scores during their break times.[30] Ilaiyaraaja would hire 

instruments from composer R. K. Shekhar, father of composer A. R. Rahman, who later joined Ilaiyaraaja's orchestra as a keyboardist.