Maestro ilaiyaraaja news & titbits

[JamesDap]

That defines our tastes - your loving his music - there is not much in common between us - I have been in Marketing (not sales) for 30 years and and am a Senior Vice President of Marketing in the US. So I know a little about Marketing. His whole existence is based on a carefully orchestrated positioning - he was launched on a Maniratnam platform when Maniratnam brand had built an equity of hipness. He carefully cultivated this prception of humitlity and tons of ignorant people fell for it aided by the media. However, it was so evident right from the start that it was a fake show if only people had the analytical capability to parse through the garbage he was throwing out. I couldnt care much about the ignorant bunch thinking that his music is great - thats your perspective. But ask that fake to not to mouth off against IR - thats what enrages me - that fake hasnt done much and he probably knows that. Thats why he resorts to these cheap attacks. What a despicable human being

On the subject of how ARR cultivates his image, one of the most amusing, ridiculous things I have seen is in a CNN interview where he pretends to search for the name of the synthesizer in front of him in his studio...you know, it's so damn hard for the genius to get out of his dreamy haze. Yeah, right, can't name the stuff he works with everyday for a living, who's he kidding. Have you ever seen Ilayaraja speak in anything but a crystal clear manner? One may or may not agree with his statements and he can sometimes be pretty disagreeable but he always appear to be sure in his mind of what he is saying. And that's the way I have seen most musicians speak about their craft. But ARR has to appear to be this dreamy rockstar, else his fans would be so disappointed if he was just like everybody else. I make this observation because ARR certainly didn't speak like that in an old Abdul Hamir interview from around 1994. THAT is probably his natural tendency and what he offers for public consumption these days is likely a put on.