Music director Ilaiyaraaja, who has composed over 5000 songs in over a 1000 films, has been honoured with the Indian Centenary Award for the Indian Personality of the year at the (International Film Festival of India) IFFI Goa 2015. The audience watched an AV about Ilaiyaraaja’s unparalleled journey in the music and film world. Ilaiyaraaja was presented the award by Shri Arun Jaitley and Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor. As an ode to the legend, host and actress Aditi Rao Hydari sang ‘Yamunai Aatrile’. Last year’s recipient of the award was actor Rajinikanth.
In his acceptance speech, Ilaiyaraaja said, “Cinema is a flowing river. If anyone wants to drink, one has to think about the flow of water at different places. The water never stops. I am fortunate to be in industry, composing music that is divine.”
Remembering his musical score for Ram Gopal Varma’s film Shiva, he said he had been asked to compose for a fight sequence, with students pitted against each other. He said, “I felt sad to see students fighting with each other. I felt pathos, and infused that into the background music without consulting RGV. When he questioned me, I said, students do not fight. They come to college for studying. My sapthaswara does not approve of fighting among students.”
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His love for music is evident in his work. Here he talked about how different the world can look with music in it. Ilaiyaraaja said the Government should include music as a part of the curriculum in schools and colleges, because that would eventually bring down violence. He beamingly confessed that he was the only person in the history of music to compose a song using only ascending notes. He’s also the only composer to compose with just three notes in a song. The three notes song ‘Paada Pirandhadhu Paatu Thaan’ was composed for a concert in Italy.
Anil Kapoor said he doubted whether he was worthy of the honour of presenting the award to a musical genius of his stature. The history between Anil Kapoor and Ilaiyaraaja goes back to 1983, when Ilaiyaraaja composed for Anil Kapoor’s Kannada film, Pallavi Anu Pallavi. It was also Mani Ratnam’s debut film as a director.