The Rare Carnatic Rāgas that Flow through Ilaiyaraaja’s Universe
“Where melody turns to meditation, and silence finds its song.”
Ilaiyaraaja’s music is a vast country of many seasons — sometimes drenched in monsoon rapture, sometimes sunlit with simplicity, and sometimes brooding like twilight before rain. Within this immense landscape, folk melody and symphonic architecture meet, each enriched by the other’s vocabulary. Hidden amid its well-trodden paths lie the rarer groves of Carnatic rāgas that the Maestro visits with private affection — moments when scholarship meets solitude and invention becomes prayer.
These rāgas are not frequent visitors to cinema; they bloom like monsoon lotuses, briefly yet memorably, when the emotional air is right. Some appear as complete classical expositions, others as passing scales moulded to fit the rhythm of a story — yet each carries the fragrance of Ilaiyaraaja’s melodic imagination. In tracing them, we glimpse the mind of a composer who could hold both the village and the conservatoire in the same breath.
This essay gathers those elusive strains — their essential swara outlines, the compositions in which they appear, and reflections on how Ilaiyaraaja coaxed each from notation into living sound. It is not merely a catalogue, but a meditation on how rare rāgas found new life when touched by his unerring instinct for balance between intellect and emotion.
Rukmambari
Ārohaṇa: S R₁ G₃ P N₃ S
Avarohaṇa: S N₃ P G₃ R₁ S
Tāla: Rūpaka
“Sri Shivasutha” from the 1994 mandolin album (also issued as Ekadantham) gives Rukmambari a devotional stillness. U. Shrinivas’s mandolin shapes the rāga like incense smoke — rising, curling, dissolving. The film song “Sri Siva Sudha” (Karpoora Mullai) reimagines the same melody in cinematic prayer, retaining its sanctity while setting it within orchestral contours.
Rāgavardhini
Ārohaṇa: S R₃ G₃ M₁ P D₁ N₂ S
Avarohaṇa: S N₂ D₁ P M₁ G₃ R₃ S
Tāla: Ādi
“Manam Kanindhu” from the same album is Rāgavardhini in quiet dialogue with itself — introspective, poised, and resolutely unhurried. The raga’s leap between R₃ and G₃ lends a noble restraint. Ilaiyaraaja later invoked its scalar hue in “Pattu Viral Thottuvittadhal” (Dhanush) and “Unai Kaanum Bodhu” (En Mana Vaanil), not as strict rāga renderings but as tonal colour — evidence of how theory softens into instinct under his hand.
🎵 Panchamukhi — The Rāga of Many Visages
Fundamental Scaffold: S R₂ M₁ D₂ N₃ S — a tonal architecture conceived and codified by Ilaiyaraaja.
Panchamukhi is not merely a raga — it is a philosophical proposition in sound, a mirror of Ilaiyaraaja’s fascination with modal geometry and symmetrical resonance. First unveiled in his 1988 orchestral opus “Nothing But the Wind”, within the movement aptly titled “Composer’s Breath”, it stands as one of the rare occasions when the composer did not borrow from the canon of Carnatic ragas, but authored one — from silence itself.
The word Panchamukhi — “the five-faced” — is no mere metaphor. It denotes the raga’s chameleonic capacity to generate five distinct melodic identities through Graha Bhedam (modal shift of the tonic), each transforming the emotional hue while retaining the genetic code of the original scale:
- First visage: S R₂ M₁ D₂ N₃ S — austere, meditative, like incense rising in a deserted shrine.
- Second visage: S G₂ P D₂ N₂ S — pastoral and unhurried, evoking flute song over sunlit fields.
- Third visage: S G₃ M₂ P D₂ S — tender, inward-looking, a murmur between lover and muse.
- Fourth visage: S R₂ G₂ M₁ D₁ S — archaic, ritualistic, echoing the cadence of a Vedic chant.
- Fifth visage: S R₁ G₂ M₂ N₂ S — dusky and wistful, like twilight refracted through memory.
Together, these five modalities form a melodic yantra — a mandala of moods orbiting a single tonal centre. In “Composer’s Breath”, Ilaiyaraaja unifies them through voice-leading of remarkable fluidity, where harmony becomes breath and counterpoint turns meditative. What emerges is not merely a raga, but a reflection on consciousness itself — one melodic thought revealing five emotional selves, each face an echo of the other.
Sarasangi
Ārohaṇa: S R₂ G₃ M₁ P D₁ N₃ S
Avarohaṇa: S N₃ D₁ P M₁ G₃ R₂ S
Sarasangi, pliant and versatile, wears many disguises in Ilaiyaraaja’s universe — rustic, devotional, symphonic. Across his oeuvre, the raga recurs like a refrain, adapting itself to every emotional climate.
- Ellorum Sollum Pattu — Marubadiyum
- Endrendrum Aanandame — Kadal Meengal
- Malligaye Malligaye — Periya Veetu Pannakaran (a prelude of exquisite beauty)
- Meenamma Meenamma — Rajathi Raja (with electric BGMs)
- Muthu Muthu — Periya Veetu Pannakaran
- Muthu Natraamam — Thiruvasagam in Symphony
- Pudhusu Pudhusu — Manidha Jaathi
- Rajanodu Rani — Sathi Leelavathi (a luminous East–West fusion)
- Thaa Thanthana Kummi Kotti — Adhisaya Piravi
- Yaar Thoorigai — Paaru Paru Pattanam Paaru
Each shows a different hue of Sarasangi — from pastoral to philosophical — yet all remain unmistakably Ilaiyaraaja’s, painted with the same melodic brush that balances Carnatic discipline and cinematic freedom.
Saraswathi
Ārohaṇa: S R₂ M₂ P D₂ S
Avarohaṇa: S N₂ D₂ P M₂ G₂ R₂ S
Saraswathi enters when serenity must speak. “Karpoora Bommai Ondru” (Keladi Kanmani), “Poovaram Sootti” (Baba Pugazh Maalai), and “Veena Vani” (Pon Megalai) reveal Ilaiyaraaja’s gift for using its tranquil lines to frame devotion and tenderness without grand flourish.
Saveri
Ārohaṇa: S R₁ M₁ P D₁ S
Avarohaṇa: S N₃ D₁ P M₁ G₃ R₁ S
“Chamakku Chamakku Cham” (Kondaveeti Donga) turns Saveri’s dawn solemnity into joyous folk rhythm. What is prayer in the concert hall becomes festival in the village — a transformation Ilaiyaraaja alone could achieve without loss of essence.
Ramani
Ārohaṇa: S G₃ M₂ P D₁ N₃ S
Avarohaṇa: S N₃ D₁ P M₂ G₃ S
(Essentially Pantuvarāli without Rishabham)
“Andhi Mazhai Pozhigiradhu” (Raaja Paarvai) embodies Ramani — a raga suspended between yearning and restraint. By omitting the Rishabham of Pantuvarāli, Ilaiyaraaja carved a new tonal corridor, half-light and half-shadow, where melody sighs more than it speaks.
Some musicological sources classify the song under Vasantha for its fluid ascent, while others hear shades of Shivaranjani intertwined with Pantuvarāli. Yet a growing consensus identifies it as Ramani — a scale of Ilaiyaraaja’s own crafting. The ambiguity itself mirrors the song’s beauty: it floats between grammar and emotion, resisting confinement, content to be twilight itself.
Discography & Referential Notes
Nothing But the Wind (1988) — features “Composer’s Breath” (Panchamukhi).
Ilaiyaraaja’s Classics in Mandolin / Ekadantham (1994) — U. Shrinivas performs “Sri Shivasutha” (Rukmambari) and “Manam Kanindhu” (Rāgavardhini).
Glossary
Graha Bhedam: Modal shift of tonic — the method used to derive Panchamukhi’s five faces.
Tāla: Rhythmic cycle; Ādi and Rūpaka are among the common patterns referenced.
Scale vs Rāga: In cinema, scales often stand in for full rāgas, used for emotional contour rather than canonical grammar.
Coda
These rare rāgas reveal Ilaiyaraaja as not merely a composer but a discoverer — a seeker who listens to what silence might sing. His engagement with the Carnatic idiom is neither ornamental nor didactic; it is organic, born of instinct and interiority. Each raga here, however brief its cinematic appearance, leaves behind the fragrance of deep study and deeper feeling.
Copyright & Attribution
All text, research, and commentary curated and written by Dhinakar Rajaram. The musical works, compositions, and recordings referenced remain the intellectual property of their respective rights holders, including the composer and performing artistes.
This article is presented purely for educational and non-commercial study — a humble archival effort to celebrate Ilaiyaraaja’s rare melodic creations. Kindly credit the author if cited elsewhere, preserving the spirit and integrity of the text.
— Compiled with reverence, for the love of rāga and the wonder of melody.
#Ilaiyaraaja #Carnatic #Ragas #MandolinShrinivas #Panchamukhi #Musicology
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