Ilaiyaraaja (born Daniel Gnanathesigan; 3 June 1943) is an Indian musician, composer, arranger, conductor, orchestrator, multi-instrumentalist, lyricist, and playback singer. He is known for his works in Indian cinema, predominantly in Tamil in addition to Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi films. He is one of the most prolific composers, having composed over 6500 songs and provided film scores for nearly 1500 feature films in nine languages by 2025. He has also performed many concerts. He was one of the earliest Indian film composers to use Western classical music harmonies and string arrangements in Indian film music.Venkatraman, S. 1995. "Film music: the new intercultural idiom of 20th century Indian music". pp. 107–112 in A. Euba and C.T. Kimberlin (eds.). Intercultural Music Vol. I. Bayreuth: Breitinger (p. 110). He is nicknamed "Isaignani" (the musical sage) and is often referred to as "Maestro", the title conferred on him by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London.
In 1986, he became the first Indian composer to record a soundtrack with computer for the film Vikram. In 2013, when CNN-IBN conducted a poll to commemorate 100 years of Indian cinema, Ilaiyaraaja secured 49% of the vote and was adjudged the country's greatest music composer. In 2025, he became the first-ever Asian, as well as Indian film composer, to compose, record, and perform live a full Western classical symphony in London. He also composed and orchestrated Thiruvasagam in Symphony (2006) - the first Indian oratorio.
Ilaiyaraaja has received several awards for his works throughout his career. In 2012, for his creative and experimental works in the field of music, he received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, the highest Indian recognition given to people in the field of performing arts. In 2010 he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian honour in India, and in 2018 the Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian award by the government of India. He is a nominated Member of Parliament in the Indian upper house, the Rajya Sabha, since July 2022.
Early life and education Ilaiyaraaja was born as Gnanathesigan in a Dalit family in Pannaipuram, at present-day Theni district in Tamil Nadu, India, on 3 June 1943. He however celebrates his birthday on 2 June to honour "Kalaignar" M. Karunanidhi, whose birthdate also is on 3 June. It was "Kalaignar" M.Karunanidhi who gave Ilaiyaraaja the title "Isaignani".
Ilaiyaraaja grew up in a rural area and was exposed to a range of Tamil folk music in his formative years.Mohan, A. 1994. Ilaiyaraja: composer as phenomenon in Tamil film culture. M.A. thesis, Wesleyan University (pp. 106–107). At the age of 14, he joined a travelling musical troupe named "Pavalar Brothers", headed by his elder brother Pavalar Varadharajan, and spent the next decade performing across South India. While working with the troupe, he penned his first composition, a musical adaptation of an elegy written by the Tamil poet laureate, Kannadasan, for India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.Rangarajan, M. The Hindu. 9 July 2004. Retrieved 19 November 2006. In the initial years he used to set tunes to the songs of his brother Pavalar Varadarajan, who was a member of the Communist Party of India.
He later went to Madras (now Chennai) along with brother Bhaskar to learn music. They had only 400 rupees, which their mother had procured by selling off the home radio. They knew no one in the city and were confident to live off the payments they would receive by singing for people on the streets.
In Madras, he became a student of Master Dhanraj, who trained him in classical music. Ilaiyaraaja emerged as the top student and a gold medalist in classical guitar after taking an exam at the Trinity College of Music in London, England. He also learnt Carnatic music from T. V. Gopalakrishnan. Name changes When he started school, his father, Ramasamy changed his name from Gnanathesigan to "Rasappa," and the people in his village called him "Raasaiya".
When he joined Dhanraj Master as a student to learn musical instruments, the master changed his name from "Raasaiya" to "Raja". While working for his first film Annakili (1976), Tamil film producer Panchu Arunachalam added the prefix "Ilaiya" (meaning 'younger' in Tamil) to the name "Raaja", and renamed him as "Ilaiyaraaja", as in the 1970s there was another popular music director with the same suffix, A. M. Rajah.
Career Session musician and orchestrator During the 1970s, Ilaiyaraaja played the 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.Gautam, S. The Hindu. 13 November 2004. Retrieved 13 October 2006.Chennai, S. "Looking back: flawless harmony in his music". The Hindu. 20 November 2005. Retrieved 15 November 2006.Choudhury, R. 2005. The films of Salil Chowdhury: Introduction . Retrieved 16 November 2006. Chowdhury once remarked that "[Ilaiyaraaja] is going to become the best composer in India". "Our main guitarist in Madras is the best composer in India", he said. After being hired as musical assistant to Kannada film composer G. K. Venkatesh, he worked on 200 film projects, mostly in Kannada cinema.Vijayakar, R. "The prince in Mumbai". Screen. 21 July 2006. Retrieved 6 February 2007. As Venkatesh's assistant, Ilaiyaraaja would orchestrate the melodic outlines developed by Venkatesh, and learn about composing under Venkatesh's guidance. During this period, Ilaiyaraaja also began to write his own scores. To listen to his compositions, he used to persuade Venkatesh's session musicians to play excerpts from his scores during their leisure time.
Film score composer
At the start of his career, the music sensibility of Ilaiyaraaja was very different to the film music composed in those days. Even though he spent a lot of his time learning, he "wasn't able to grasp how music was being made for films." However, in 1975 when film producer Panchu Arunachalam was impressed by a song Ilaiyaraaja casually sung, he commissioned him to compose the songs and film score for the Tamil film Annakili (1976). For the soundtrack, Ilaiyaraaja applied techniques of modern popular film music orchestration to Tamil folk poetry and folk song melodies. This resulted in creation of a fusion of Western and Tamil idioms. Initially he was little apprehensive about how his work would be received, he thought musicians in the industry may write him off. However, when Annakili released in 1976, the music became a huge hit. For his following 12 films, Ilaiyaraaja based his compositions on the contemporary film music. Later, when a new wave of films started to come, they opened the space for the kind of music he wanted to explore.Greene, P.D. 2001. "Authoring the Folk: the crafting of a rural popular music in south India". Journal of Intercultural Studies 22 (2): 161–172.Sivanarayanan, A. 2004. Translating Tamil poetry. World Literature Today 78(2): 56–58.
Ilaiyaraaja's use of Tamil folk music in his film scores injected new life in the Indian film score milieu.Baskaran, S.T. The Hindu. 6 January 2002. Retrieved 15 November 2006. By the mid-1980s, he started gaining increasing stature as a composer and music director in the South Indian film industries.Greene, P.D. 1997. Film music: Southern area. Pp. 542–546 in B. Nettl, R.M. Stone, J. Porter and T. Rice (eds.). The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume V: South Asia—The Indian Subcontinent. New York: Garland Pub. (p. 544). He worked with Indian poets and lyricists such as Kannadasan, Vaali, Vairamuthu, O. N. V. Kurup, Sreekumaran Thampi, Veturi, Acharya Aatreya, Sirivennela Seetharama Sastry, Chi. Udayashankar and Gulzar. Most of his compositions were sung by S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, S. Janaki and K. S. Chithra.
Non-cinematic output
Ilaiyaraaja's first two non-film albums were explorations in the fusion of Indian and Western classical music. The first, How to Name It? (1986), is dedicated to the Carnatic master Tyāgarāja and to J. S. Bach. It features a fusion of the Carnatic form and ragas with Bach partitas, fugues and Baroque musical textures.Greene, P.D. 1997. Film music: Southern area. Pp. 542–546 in B. Nettl, R.M. Stone, J. Porter and T. Rice (eds.). The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume V: South Asia—The Indian Subcontinent. New York: Garland Pub. (pp. 544–545). The second, Nothing But Wind (1988), was performed by flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia and a 50-piece orchestra and takes the conceptual approach suggested in the title—that music is a "natural phenomenon akin to various forms of air currents".Oriental Records. Undated. Nothing But Wind . Retrieved 19 November 2006.
He has also composed a set of Carnatic kritis which were recorded by electric mandolinist U. Srinivas for the album Ilayaraaja's Classicals on the Mandolin (1994), as well as albums of religious/devotional songs. His Guru Ramana Geetam (2004) is a cycle of prayer songs inspired by the Hindu mystic Ramana Maharshi, and his Thiruvasakam: A crossover (2005) is an oratorio of ancient Tamil poems transcribed partially in English by American lyricist Stephen Schwartz and performed by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra.Viswanathan, S. 2005. . Frontline 22 (15), 16–29 July. Retrieved 13 October 2006.Parthasarathy, D. 2004. . The Hindu, Friday, 26 November. Retrieved 1 March 2007. His most recent release is a world music-oriented album called The Music Messiah (2006).Soman, S. 2006. 'The Music Messiah' . The Hindu, Saturday, 30 December. Retrieved 27 February 2007. In 2025, he became the first Asian to debut a western classical symphony in London, alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Entitled Valiant, the symphony was also recorded by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under conductor Mikel Toms.
In May 2020, he composed a song titled "Bharath Bhoomi" in tribute to people working amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It was performed by S. P. Balasubrahmanyam. A video for the song was released on Ilaiyaraaja's YouTube channel on 30 May 2020, in Tamil and Hindi.
On his birthday in 2020, Ilaiyaraaja announced the upcoming launch of his 'Isai OTT' app. He stated that the app would contain much more than just his songs, like behind-the-scenes trivia about how each song was conceived, produced, and delivered, as well as collaborations with other musicians.
Ilaiyaraaja's song "Naanthaan Ungappanda" from the 1981 film Ram Lakshman was part of the playlist for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics.
His compositions "Paayum Puli Title Music" and "Ilamai Itho" were part of the soundtrack of Ashim Ahluwalia's 2012 Cannes Film Festival entry, Miss Lovely. A section of "Oru Kili" from Ilaiyaraaja's soundtrack for Aanandha Kummi (1983) was featured in the trailer of The Lovebirds (2020).
Ilaiyaraaja's music has been sampled a number of times, particularly by hip-hop artists. The Black Eyed Peas sampled "Unakkum Ennakum" from Sri Raghavendra (1985) for the song "The Elephunk Theme" on their 2003 album Elephunk.Mehar, R. 2007. Hip-hopping around the world . The Hindu, 17 October. Retrieved 14 March 2008. Meek Mill sampled one of Ilaiyaraaja's songs for "Indian Bounce". Alternative artist M.I.A. sampled "Kaatukuyilu" from the film Thalapathi (1991) for her song "Bamboo Banga" on the album Kala (2007). "Mella Mella Ennaithottu" from Vaazhkai was sampled by Rabbit Mac on the song "Sempoi". Gonjasufi sampled "Yeh Hawa Yeh Fiza" from the movie Sadma on his song "Sheep".
Live performances