Echoes of the Maestro – Song 40 – Oru Maina Maina Kuruvi

While the Uzhaipaali album is itself wholesome and all the songs from this album are my absolute favorites, this song is special, especially for the absolute dance value this song has. Eventhough, though this song can be termed the cabret type of song the sheer difference in Music Illayaraja shows while a new song lead lady shows up is brilliant.

Echoes of the Maestro – Song 33 – Peigala Nambadhey

Peigala Nambadhey is a unique song, especially the Preludes, and I’ll come back to that later. The plot of this story was inspired by a real-life incident involving Kamal Hassan, where his domestic help attempted to kidnap his daughters for ransom. In an interview, he mentioned that most of the movie deals with his fears. Watching this film as a child deeply affected me and changed the way I see the world. Even now, I cry when I watch the scene where Kamal tries to rescue his daughter from a brothel and pleads with everyone to leave them alone.

Echoes of the Maestro – Song 32 – Pootukkal Potaalum

I’ve been rewatching some of the old Captain Vijayakanth movies for my Podcast and man what a ride. It’s like a Tamil saying “Oru Kallula Rendu Maanga” which allows me to revisit some of my childhood favorites and use them for the Newsletter and my Podcast.

Echoes of the Maestro – Song 30 – Janani Janani

Despite being an atheist and not particularly spiritual, this song evokes emotions that are hard to describe. I don’t know if it’s the music, the lyrics, or Illayaraja’s voice that does it. I stumbled upon this song randomly a decade ago, and it has been one of my favorites since then

Echoes of the Maestro – Song 29 – Thaalaattu

Achchani was released in 1978 and directed by Karaikudi Narayanan and the story is based on Narayanan’s Stage play of the same name. A couple of songs are very famous in this album and I’m pretty sure you must have come across this song too. However, this is the first time I’ve listened to it.

Echoes of the Maestro – Song 28 – Anaadhai Endru

Yet another song from Sethupathi IPS. The original song lasts for 4 minutes, but in the movie, it plays for just about 2 minutes. P. Vasu initially had Sathyaraj in mind when writing this story, possibly because of their previous collaboration in the movie “Walter Vetrivel”, where Sathyaraj played the titular role