Survival of the fittest

The most common complaint I hear about Illayaraja is that he persisted with ONLY SPB and Janaki and lots of talented singers went unnoticed during the period 1976 – 1995. Before I proceed with my viewpoint, let us get the record straight.

It is very clear that though SPB and Janaki dominated that era, there were so many other singers (Jesudas, Mano, Jeyachandran, Malaysia Vasudevan, Deepan Chakravarthi, Chitra, Swarnalatha, Susheela, Uma Ramanan, Vani Jayaram, Jency, Sasirekha to name a few) who sang under him. (I will come up with detailed statistics a little later)

I cannot buy the theory of “persisting with SPB/Janaki” and “talented singers went unnoticed”. It is one of the allegations with no logic, whatsoever. My argument is twofold:

Firstly, opportunities are not given. It must be grabbed. A talented singer will grab an opportunity instead of having a composer notice him/her. No one person elevated A.R.Rahman. With his shear talent, he rose to the new heights when Raaja was already at his peak.

Secondly, if you were to come up with a roles & responsibilities of a music director, it would look something like this, IMO:

Must give apt and good music for the movie

Must give ALL Hit numbers (from the crew standpoint)

Must have re-recording that elevates the movie and carries it well

PERIOD

I don’t think introducing new singers is a said responsibility of a composer. He/She might choose to do it, if needed. Composer understands the emotions needed for his/her composition better than anyone else. By now, every one of us know Raaja’s throughput. He was able to score for over 50 movies a year and if SPB and Janaki could match his throughput with the best quality, why should and why would he have to go out of the way and start looking for new singers? How many songs did SPB or Janaki mess up with, anyways?

With the dearth of tunes, quality lyrics and innovation, new singers are the only solace to the current music directors. Anyways, in the name of introducing new singers the current crop of music directors have made a mockery of things. Singers (I hate to call them that way) who cannot even sing in proper Shruthi, who cannot pronounce the language properly end up singing several albums L All they have to do is do basic rendering with some stylish mispronunciations. Thanks to the sound engineers. Sad state of affairs! And after 5-10 albums they are thrown in the dust and they end up being models, looking for acting chances and what not! There were at least 200-250 new singers introduced in the last 10 years. How many of them have stood out the time and test? With just one or two success under their belt, they already are on the top of the world. Thanks to the hysteria in the media! What is the whole point in having plethora of singers who have sung only 2-3 songs are never used again?

Illayaraja has a no non-sense approach to this. We all know that he is a perfectionist and a strict disciplinarian. He has a score sheet and track ready when a singer comes to the recording studio. He doesn’t like to settle for anything less than what he had envisioned. Almost every singer has acknowledged that it is a great learning experience and you must be really talented to sing under him. That isn’t a fault of him, huh!

Thank God. The reformists have not started demanding reservation in this industry.

Rather, I have a poser to Raaja. Why the hell (with all respect) you stopped giving chances to SPB, whose voice is only getting better as his age progresses?