Not everyone gets to live their dream. Few lucky ones do. I hit upon a 1979 radio interview between Abdul Hameed (the man with lovely golden voice 😍) and Ilayaraja (IR). When Abdul Hameed posed the question IR’s future goals, he touches upon his desire to compose a Western Symphony. In 1979!! That is the trigger for my first line. With Valiant, he has lived up to his dream. To hear we have to wait may be another six months to a year for its release till IR completes his planned live performances.

I plan to do this series with the focus of digging up not so often heard gems of IR compositions. My pressure goes up whenever people keep throwing around only Sundari Kannal Oru Seidhi and Thendral vandhu theendum pothu as their favorite compositions. Those are great compositions, no doubt. But they don’t talk about other compositions. It is like they are stuck with the same playlist. To be honest, I was like that too. Then one fine day thanks to Quarantine from Reality series by Subashree Thanikachalam, triggered the search for unknown gems of our stalwarts, MSV, Chandrabose, Shankar-Ganesh, IR, and more. Based on time I may start treasure hunt on other composers also (yes, this is a threat 😀).

Disclaimer: I am a music listener. I don’t have much understanding of technicalities of music. For me, the composition has to connect, stir something inside, call it feeling or emotion or just pure joy.

Naan Pesa Vanthen

From the movie Paalooti Valartha Kili from 1976. IR’s second movie. Sung by SPB and Janaki. Lyrics by Kannadasan. Trivia: This is the first song by SPB for IR. I haven’t seen the movie. You don’t have to. Listening to the composition you will get the feel, the yearning between the lovers. They want to talk a lot but can’t get the words out. The words come out as whispers. The lyrics convey the fluttering of their eyes and butterflies in their heart. Kannadasan uses pada pada vena, sala sala vena (Iraittai Kilavi) brilliantly in the lyrics to capture what they go through. The emotion gets to us. Check out how IR adds his embellishments after the lines Sol ena kannum and Nil ena Nenjum. In black and white photography, Vijayakumar and Sripriya look lovely, and close-ups are gorgeous. Thanks to the directors, the actors don’t lip sync the song. The song captures their silence beautifully. Naan Pesa Vanthen calms and sooths our heart.