Ilaiyaraja's New Albums 2016-18, News and Titbits

[kr]

I have accepted him as a music genius. Period.
With a gross mistake, I would have done more than a hand gesture.




Who would think this is a utopian world? Its mostly Dog eat dog world. How can one justify their own bad behaviour because they were treated bad once by others? If everybody follows that principle, then good things will cease to exist.

I would NOT definetely call anyone a saint. I am yet to come across a saint. He has portrayed him to be more spiritually inclined, hence public's expectations for him to stand above the rest is quite ginormous. And erractic actions undermines the credibility.

Look at the video clip of famous bleep song controversy.
I am not justifying the reporter's action. It was an inappropriate question at an inappropriate time. However, he did not ask IR how to treat perivascular disease with latest drug. It was well within the realms of his territory (cine music). Maybe the common expectation would be to answer with a simple, 'no comment' or 'inappropriate question'. Instead IR, questioned the reporter.....

"Unaku modhalla enkitta pesa thagudhi iruka nu...."

I got confused. Now what qualifications does a reporter need to ask celebrities?

Anyway, I shall stop my arguments with this because.......majority of public doesn't accept it. It was quite evident from the media reports.

Dochu:

I have followed you for years and you have been generally supportive of IR.

I have a slightly different take on both the events. Regarding the one with the reporter, you have to consider the context. IR seemed genuinely concerned about people affected with the floods - as exhibited by his delivering food by boat and dropping of 1000s of blankets etc. The reporter uses one of his flood related visits for his question whereas IR stops to answer reporters impromtu to answer flood related questions. Even then IR first tells the reporter that this is not the place for such questions and it is when the reporter aggressively pursues, IR uses those words. In the immediate context of the suffering he has seen in the floods, the repeated aggressive questioning regarding a crass issue that IR had no relation to was the trigger and you will have to have more contempt for the insensitive qualities of the reporter than IR. I do.

Regarding his reaction to the Tabla player in the video, you can see that IR has been showing his displeasure right from the start of the song as something was not right and looks like signalling him to be in synch. However, when he continues to be not in sync is when IR uses those words. The one thing we all know about IR is his pure dedication to music and he has demonstrated this over all these years that in that quest of perfection to music, he has alienated many. From what I have seen in the two concerts in NJ I visited, he really cares about the music that they are performing and wants to not shortchange the paying audience. How may other troupes, practice for a month before engaging on a tour like this. What I saw in these concerts was even when Mano mispronounces a word, IR corrects him as he cares about perfection. Imagine, it would be easier for to not care and deliver songs with blemishes and be the crowd pleaser. But this is his DNA - being genuine to his art that he has dedicated himself to. The other hat I saw in the concert was the genuine affection his team had for him. Also not talked about much is when his singers hit the difficult notes correctly or when his orchestra plays a complex piece well, he looks at them and applauds in admiration and turns to the crowds to signal to them the beauty of what they did.

I recently heard from a friend of mine who had gone to an Anirudh concert in Toronto that most of the music was piped in and there was a lot of lip synching that went on. It is these guys who are celebrated these days.

While there is a lot of bad things people say about IR, not many talk about the fact of his reverence to real musical genius be it MSV, C Ramachandra, SDBurman, Dr. Balamurali Krishna, TVG, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer etc. His loyalty to Panchu Arunachalam until PA's last days. You also see the members of his orchestra including the sons of past music directors like Govardhan and Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan (both the sons excel in their fields). He also had music director Dakshinamoorthy as the one who would instruct the singers before his recording. I see IR as a man who respects genuine talent and is really loyal but someone who in his own way protests and stands up against pretense and what he perceives as authoritative (in movies, a person with those traits would be a superstar).

For me, I genuinely admire IR not just for his music but for his whole being. (I was so proud when my wife, who is a fan of IR music but a crazy IR fan like me, said when we at the recent concert in NJ that she just wants to be in his presence because there something divine about IR and she hopes that some of those vibrations from his presence could be a blessing).

Anyway my objective is not to change your mind but to provide you my take based on my perceptions of the context surrounding the situations. I feel that in general IR does not get the respect he deserves from the media and characterizations of him and I would not be surprised that there may be vested interests fueling that. My hope is that we do not succumb to that and consider the overall context.