Musical Tribute To Ilayaraja From DSP

HYDERABAD: The musical maestro Ilayaraja is celebrating his 77th birthday today (June 2nd). Social media is flooded with birthday wishes for the musical legend. Tollywood energetic music director, Devi Sri Prasad took to his Twitter and posted a video. He captioned it as, "HAPPIEST MUSICAL BDAY to The RAJA of MUSIC...ISAIGNANI ILAYARAJA SIR". DSP dedicated an instrumental performance of the violin song from the movie, Iddarammayilatho. Here is the video, check it out.

HAPPIEST MUSICAL BDAY to d RAJA of MUSIC..
ISAIGNANI ILAYARAJA SIR❤️

Dedicating dis INSTRUMENTAL PRFRMNCE of d #VIOLINSONG frm #IDDARAMMAYILATHO 2 d MAESTRO who always Inspires me

Lov U 4ever Dearest RAJA SIR
THANKU 4 all d MUSIC🙏@nora_germain 🎻https://t.co/v8beplG6Rm

— DEVI SRI PRASAD (@ThisIsDSP) June 2, 2020

Ilayaraja, an Indian film composer, singer, instrumentalist, orchestrator and songwriter started his musical journey under his brother's guidance. He is one of the well known musicians and has a tag of world's most prolific composer. He enjoys an immense fan following. He is one among those composers who write the musical notes first and then play to hear it.

He composed not less than 7,000 songs and  scored music for more than 1,000 films. He was awarded with the titles 'Maestro' by Symphony Orchestra and 'Isaignani' by former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Kalaignar M Karunanidhi. He won awards like five Indian National Film Awards, Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan, Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and many others.

Trivia:

• Ilayaraja was born as Gnanathesikan in 1943 in Pannaipuram, Theni district, Tamil Nadu. He was born Christain but later converted to a Hindu.
• The father of Ilayaraja changed his name from Gnanathesikan to Rajaiya. Later, he joined in a muscial academy as a student to learn musical instruments, then the master renamed and called him "Raaja". After that, the Tamil film producer 'Panchu Arunachalam' added 'Ilaiya' to his name Raaja.
• Ilayaraja married his sister's daughter Jeeva and the couple were blessed with three children, Karthik Raja, Yuvan Shankar Raja and Bhavatharini.
• Ilayaraja still uses his old harmonium.
• He refused National Awards for twice.
• Ilayaraja was the first music director to have a standing cut-out as tall as Rajinikanth during the release of the film 'Murattu Kaalai'.