It was his 75th birthday and in the dais with the orchestra from Hungary, Maestro Ilayaraja was conducting the concert. As a part of interactions with the celebrities, Superstar Rajni was called on to the stage. In talking about Ilayaraja’s sincerity and commitment, Rajni mentions that Ilayaraja completed the re-recording of 3 full length feature films in a single day. Irrespective of whether you like Rajni and Ilayaraja, from a purely talent and commitment point of view, this is no joke.
To simply imagine the magnitude of what Ilayaraja has done, imagine yourself sitting in a beach. A frail old man is carrying an aluminum tin in which he is selling raw mangoes. This is a common scene that almost everybody sees in the beach. But something crucial happens when you are focusing on the old man. We forget or do not give enough attention to the sound of the waves. But, the whole wave lashing sound accentuates the scenario and gives a complete feeling of beach. Neither the sound of the waves nor the frail old man alone can give you that completeness. In Every time movie as we all know, music directors accentuate scenes with audios. But unlike naturally occurring wave sounds, the music director has to think about theme music to that particular scenario or music that is representative of characters that are present in the scene. But, the beauty of a good Background score lies in using silence perfectly. We would not love watching a movie that has 145 minutes of violin chorus. The sense to actually muffle the background music in right place also gives the actor his place to perform as a good music can always take the attention from the scene at sight.
Now, continuing the story in first paragraph, if we have to re-record the whole 2 hr and 30 minutes movie, one has to remember all scenes, situations, background locations and myriad other factors. It is just mind boggling to imagine Ilayaraja did re-recording for essentially an 8 hour video remembering all the scenes and situations. While I came across this fact, I actually went back to one of my favorite movies, Nayakan to see the scenes and mainly focus on how Ilayaraja has scored the Background music.
This scene has a separate fan base for Kamal’s acting but we just close our eyes for a moment and let Ilayaraja do the talking.
As all know, a pissed off Sakthivel goes to meet the commissioner of Police. The intensity of confrontation is perfectly captured by the first 10 seconds high pitch shenai like music and the a set of violin rumbling which is silenced after 20 seconds. Now comes the interesting part. Ilayaraja uses silence as a build up to the forthcoming event of Velu identifying that his daughter is the wife of Comm. of police. Around 40 seconds, we start to hear a mild television static noise which grows in decibels that indicates a revelation. The moment the frame switches from Velu to the photograph, Ilayaraja uses the symbolic shenai theme music which Ilayaraja had been using to indicate the complex father-daughter relationship throughout the movie. Around 1:07, it abruptly stops when he sees his daughter. More like a jumpcut, when she says “Appa”, Ilayaraja shifts to the famous “thenpandi cheemaiyile” flute theme for velu which he had used till now for all inflection events in his life. Mind you, he could have continued the same father-daughter relationship music to indicate the same here, but instead he switches back to the main theme to reinforce the story from the hero’s point of view. Right after the tension settles, he again calms the background to let the actors do their job. Imagine the same scenario with some melancholic guitar chord playing. Right at 2:02, we hear an “amma” from his grandson. Again, to show the story from hero’s perspective, he goes to back to main theme music, but he doesn’t do it blandly. To express the joy of having had a grandson, when Velu says “un Kozhandhaiya ? (your son ?)”, he adds a little joyful prelude with some jingles. Right after she snubs him from seeing her child, we again go back to the strained relationship music that exists between the father and daughter. Finally, the background moves to the main theme again, establishing another misfortune event in his life.
Thematically conveying the mood of the story through music enhances the audience’s capacity to grasp on to the line of action. As we all saw, this is just a 3 minute video clip which is filled with almost all sorts of emotions, happiness, sad, joy, relief etc. Now if we imagine a full length movie, it would have multiple scenes of varying lengths to which such uses of silences and background score needs to be done and the accuracy to which it has be done is very demanding. To have done re-recording for 3 full length films in a single day itself is a big achievement, but to have done with the kind of quality Ilayaraja gives to each film is something that can never be replicated by any other person.
For all his press meets, I constantly try to hate him. But once the strings kicks in, one can not hate him.
Blind Octaves 