

It was an excellent rendition, with the soaring live violins adding their bit to the music.

Joteyali, jote joteyali is undoubtedly the most popular Ilaiyaraaja number in Kannada, and S P Balasubramanyam, who sang it originally for Geetha. Songs from that era have remained popular on radio and with orchestras playing at festival pandals and weddings all across Karnataka. He began making music for Kannada films in the 1980s, and his big early hits include Geetha (dir Shankar Nag, 1981), Nanna Neenu Gellalaare (dir Vijay, 1981) and Pallavi Anupallavi (1983). Ilaiyaraaja has been mind-bogglingly prolific, scoring music for 1,000-plus films, and creating about 5,000 songs. It is now well-known that when Venkatesh was making music for Rajkumar-starrer Sampattige Saval (1974), Ilaiyaraaja pitched for the actor as singer, and the result was the wildly successful ‘Yaare koogaadali.’

He speaks Kannada, thanks perhaps to his long association with G K Venkatesh, composer of hit Kannada songs. It was dominated by Kannada songs, with a sprinkling of Tamil, Telugu and Hindi numbers.Īt many points, Ilaiyaraaja explained the context of his songs. The concert began at 7 pm, about an hour late, and went on for a little over three hours. The distance did not deter his fans: they turned up in large numbers, braving the jams along the way. Titled Pallavi Anupallavi, after one of his hit films, the show was held at the Kempegowda International Airport concert arena, a good 40 km from the heart of the city. Songs from the 1980s received the loudest applause at the Ilaiyaraaja concert in Bengaluru on Saturday.
