Most people are familiar with the idea of Bollywood, even if they've never seen an actually Bollywood film, but I doubt too many know about Kollywood. Apparently it's the epicenter of the Tamil language film industry located in the Kodambakkam neighborhood in the city of Chennai. I only learned about this alt-Bollywood while looking up the history of its most storihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifed composer, Ilaiyaraaja. And I was only researching him because of the fine http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giffolks at B-Music/Finders Keepers who sent the station a fantastic two volume collection of his compositions.
Wow.
This stuff puts the same-same nature of Bollywood soundtracks to shame. Ilaiyaraaja is too old to have been diagnosed as having ADHD as a child (he was born in 1943), but he clearly found the right outlet for his temperament as he traverses the sonic globe drawing influences from its farthest reaches and synthesizes them into something distinctly his own. Take a look at the "Impact and musical style" section on his Wikipedia page for the double-digit list of sounds he's drawn on. Of course when you've done 900+ film scores over a 34 year career, you're going to need a bigger palette to paint from than the James Newton Howard's of the world.
Or just check out this clip of "Solla Solla," the song from which this thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwo-volume compilation takes its title and hear how Ilaiyaraaja melds psych-guitar with tabla and funk inside of the first thirty seconds.
Then go check out the official pages for Solla Solla Volume 1 and Solla Solla Volume 2 and pick these records up (and check out some of the other amazing stuff those fine Finders are releasing).
Thanks for reading, now start listening...
