Fantastic Combinations : Ilaiyaraaja-Maniratnam - A Intro...

I have been planning a series of write-ups on various terrific combinations, which produced phenomenal music scores in Indian cinema. And my eye was on the composers/film-makers/lyricists/singers of Yester-era, like “Naushad-Mehboob Khan” or “Naushad-Shakheel Badayuni” or “Madan Mohan-Rajinder Kishen” or “O.P.Nayyar-Asha Bhonsle” etc.,. but the output of such combinations was so prolific that it will take ages for me to track down the gems and write about them. However, I haven’t discarded the idea yet. I just need more time to probe more & collect interesting snippets, which is a continuous process ofcourse.
Even down south, there are such wonderful combinations, like “Ghantasala-Vijaya Productions”, “Rajeswara Rao-Pendyala”, or even Ilaiyaraaja’s films with Balu mahendra, Mahendran(tamil director), K.Balachander etc.,.

Only yesterday, it occurred to me that a comprehensive set of posts, as in a thread, could be posted about the fantastic combination “Maniratnam-Ilaiyaraaja”. This is one combination, in south-indian films, which gave some fantastic songs, in each and every film they collaborated.
When I shared this idea with Ravi, he green-signalled to come up with combined-write-ups ie.,. both of us would be adding our part to each post. Also, each post can be about a complete film or could be restricted to a single song alone. This is because the output of this combination is a phenomenal one and there are many songs, which deserve a detailed write-up individually. We hope to take up discussions on Background scores too, for Ilaiyaraaja is a king when it comes to background score. However, it wouldn’t take ages to complete this series as myself and ravi are geared-up, to make this blog more active, by writing more frequently.

So, before we shoot the first post, let me trace back the filmography of this brilliant combination. There are ten films which Ilaiyaraaja did with Maniratnam.

1.Pallavi Anu Pallavi(*ing: Anil kapoor,lakshmi)
2.Onaru(*ing: Mohanlal)
3.Pagal Nilavu(*ing: Revathy,Murali)
4.Idhaya Kovil(*ing: Mohan)
5.Mouna Raagam(*ing: Mohan, Revathy,Karthik)
6.Naayakan(*ing: Kamal Haasan)
7.Agni Nakshthram(*ing: Prabhu,Karthik,Amala)
8.Geethanjali(*ing: Nagarjuna,Girija)
9.Anjali(*ing: Raghuvaran,Revathy,kids)
10.Thalapathi(*ing: Rajnikanth,Mammootty,Shobana,Arvind Swamy,Bhanupriya)

The next post, on the music of “pallavi anu-pallavi”, will be up shortly. Do peep in.