A farce called Padma Awards!

Another Padma awards list is out on the eve of another Republic Day.

I am not surprised to find many a deserving name missing from the list. And I am no longer disturbed to see so many also rans in their chosen profession finding a pride of place in the list under various awards. Because the kind of lobbying that goes behind the scenes every year to get oneself included in this list is common knowledge.

But nothing can explain the absence of Maestro Ilaiyaraaja’s name from this honour list. Year after year I have been, like millions of others, waiting to find his name in the list.

This list is supposed to be a list of people who excel in their chosen field and make the nation proud. And a proud nation acknowledges their contribution by bestowing these awards on them. But year after year this list is becoming a huge farce, to say the least.

After his more than a 30-year contribution to his chosen area, that is film music, what more the nation expects from Ilaiyaraaja? It is beyond my comprehension.

For more than 25 years he has been a colossus in the south Indian film music scene. He has composed music for a mind boggling 800 plus films-background scores plus more than 4000 songs. And he has many non-film albums to his credit including the recently completed Tiruvacagam in Oratorio format involving a western classical orchestra and chorus voices.

What else should he do to deserve such a honour?

Can some one enlighten the public?

From his first film “Annakkili” Ilaiyaraaja has been a path breaker. From then onwards his evolution and progression to the present level of writing a full-scale western classical work is gradual but in gigantic progression.

And for the school dropout son of an estate worker in a non-descript village at the foot of Kodaikanal hills, it is really a huge climb up the hill.

At first he was termed just as a folk tune charmer. Then slowly he started showing his knowledge of carnatic classical music. And his orchestrations also started showing a beautiful mix of melody and powerful arrangements. Purists may not have liked it. But can you forget the “Mohanam” varnam beautifully turned into a lovely song as in “Agninatchatram”? Can you forget that song with out “Avarohanam” in “Sindu Bairavi”? I believe his “Vedic Chants” is still a hot selling album in which he has made an 8-year-old girl chant the Vedas, against the tradition.

And we cannot deny the fact that he elevated film’s background scoring to an art form. So much so, even the themes he used in the films background music became humming tunes. And even today there is no one like him who can carry an entire film through on the strength of his background music alone.

The other day one of the top directors of the Tamil film industry, in the midst of working on the final mix of his latest release, was telling me: “After my MD completed the rerecording, I found total absence of music in many important scenes… I did not have time to sit with him again, so without any alternative, I myself filled up those areas from the music done in other reels. After all only Raja Sir is capable of deciding accurately where to leave the scene in silence and where to fill up with music, no one else, not even the directors”.

He is not alone. In the industry if late Sivaji Ganesan is a benchmark for acting then Ilaiyaraaja has set the highest possible benchmark for background scoring.

Hence whenever a director sits with his music director for a background scoring session, a comparison with the Master is some thing inevitable. Same goes for a viewer who cannot help feeling the absence of the Master when he could have easily elevated a reasonably good scene to a much higher plane.

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. A music director who unlike his predecessors and contemporaries, not dependent on faceless orchestrators and arrangers who are in plenty in the Indian film industry. That is, Ilaiyaraaja’s music alone is one hundred percent his own creation. Today for most of the Hindi films the music director whose name appears in credits composes only the songs. Even for this he gives the tune and some orchestrator/arranger does the rest. The film’s re-recording music is mostly not by him. It will be either by some nameless arranger or some music director from the south. Actually in today’s world any one can become a film music director. No great job really. What you require is a good collection jaz, pop, rock music CDs, that is all.

The fact remains Ilaiyaraaja is the only composer in India, even today, who composes the entire music mentally and puts it directly on paper. That is, composing at the highest possible level. Apart from Ilaiyaraaja there are only two composers capable of writing notataions-Vanraj Bhatia and (Laxmikant) Pyarelal in Bombay. But certainly not at the speed of Ilaiyaraaja. To compose music what Ilaiyaraaja requires is just a pen and paper, that is all.

Just when every one thought that Ilaiyaraaja has settled into a pattern, he again surprised every one by bringing out two independent albums. But even in these two works Ilaiyaraaja has been a path breaker. His albums “Nothing But Wind” and “How to Name It?” proved that. For the first time in the annals of the history of music, fusion has been explored and exposed in depth by Ilaiyaraaja. Though fusion has been attempted by many others, this is the first successful attempt, where he has altered and shaped the meaning of fusion into its actual interpretation and has given this interpretation not only self-expression but also a correlation of the traditional and modern techniques in music.

And his first full-fledged symphonic work with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London followed this in 1993.

Review his works, well known western music critic Prof. Sheryar Ookerjee says, “Ilaiyaraaja's conspicuous quality is his ability to so integrate the Indian and Western idioms that the seams can hardly be noticed and the result is usually pleasant, charming and satisfying”.

And Pritish Nandy was more candid in his comments: “There are few things that bridge the great Brahmin, non-Brahmin divide in Tamil Nadu. And one of them is admiration for the music of Ilaiyaraaja. One of the most original composers we have produced in recent times, Ilaiyaraaja achieves with great success what others have attempted over the years and fumbled-and that is a truly creative fusion of Indian and Western music, without it sounding like the offspring of a panther and a jackass howling in exquisite agony”.

I would not term Ilaiyaraaja a film music director. Ilaiyaraaja is a composer who happens to be working in the film medium all these years. So his present commercial rating in the film industry would not be relevant to him unlike other film music directors. He is still one of the most original composers India has produced in recent times. You cannot take it away from him.

But in spite of all this, if the powers that be feel that he does not deserve an award, then these awards have lost even the little amount of honour that come with them.

I am sure one day, some one somewhere will wake up and include his name as a also ran. And at that time Ilaiyaraaja’s answer should be “Thanks, No Thanks”.

That is the only way he can retain his self-respect. Not only his but also that of his millions and millions of fans across the world.

But in the mean while will someone from the government tell us why this omission is happening year after year……?