Ilayaraja was born on 2nd June 1943 in Pannaipuram, a little hamlet Pannaipuram ,near Madurai,Tamil Nadu . He was the third son to Ramasamy and Chinnathayi. Although he was named as Gnanadesikan he was affectionately called as Rasaiyya. Later in his life, he began to stick the Raja named by his tutor Dhanraj Master under whom he learnt a considerable chunk of instrument skills. Finally Ilayaraja name was given by the tamil film director Panju Arunachalam. Later he was known by many titles like "Isaignani" ( given by politician Karunanidhi ),Nadhabramam (God of music creation), Ragadevan (king of tunes), Maestro.

After Ramaswamy's demise (ilayaraja's father), his mother took the realms of the family and struggled hard to raise her kids. Ilayaraja had extreme love and affection towards his mother which could be sensed in his compositions even today.

Chinnasami's dream was to leave permanent impressions in the field of cinema. His interests in cinema brought him to Madras in 1968 to learn music.Simultaneously he had his grounding in Indian classical music. During this period he had begun writing experimental music and was trying to form an orchestra 'Pavalar brothers'.He scored music for some drama houses, performed on the stages, played choir music in churches, besides hop-skiping VIPs entreating music openings in the tinsel world. He managed to land in the orchestra of G K Venkatesh who was an assistant in the popular Viswanathan - Ramamurthy's orchestra and later on became a film music director.

With no formal education either in music or otherwise, Illaiyaraja has been a path breaker.He won a gold medal in Classical Guitar Trinity college of Music, London .Ilayaraja produced some movies later in his life under the banner --Pavalar productions in rememberance of his brother who died when the family faced exteme poverty.

Ilayaraja entered the tamil film industry and composed his first tamil music in 1976 for the movie 'Annakili". The score for this film was a runaway success. It took the audience by surprise as it was totally a different kind of music than the other leading music directors at that time.Most of his movies were a instant hit at the stake of the music alone. Directors used his name to make profit.He adores the music composers like Ramachandra, Madan Mohan. J S Bach is his favorite in the West, and never fails to express his views about him either with the baton or with words, when opportunity strikes.

With his arrival on the scene, for the first time in India, we got a complete music director who does every thing-composing, orchestration, arrangement of instruments and writing notations.Since then he holds a record of composing songs for more than 750 feature films which include composing songs and also the background track for each one of these movies in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi and English.

And even today there is no one like him who can carry an entire film on the strength of his background music alone - the success of at least 100 movies in India have been solely due to his background score. Innovations in chords, progression of chords, strings, percussion, points & counterpoints, harmony, melody, polyphony, bass in the foreground, waltz like movements, baroque style & symphonic interludes- there is nothing this man has not interpreted in his own inimitable grandiose style.

In July 1993 recorded his first major work in western classical music, his Symphony No.1 with the world famous Royal philharmonic Orchestra of London under the baton of John Scott. Ilaiyaraaja is the first Asian whose symphony was performed by the prestigious RPO (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) whose patron is Her Majesty The Queen Elizabeth and the president is Lord Yehudi Menuhin.

He is also the first Indian who has written a western classical symphony. Composing a symphony is the ultimate in composing music in the western classical tradition. That is on the lines of such great composers like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, who had given us so much of great music. The time taken to complete a symphony to be played by a full scale symphony orchestra varies from composer to composer; depending upon his mood, the complexity of music, etc. If Mozart took a few days to complete a symphony, Brahms took fourteen years to complete one of his symphonies. And Ilaiyaraaja well known for his speed of composing completed this symphony in just one month's time.

Equally adept at Indian classical, Western classical and modern music, Illaiyaraja’s works have won him praise and accolades from great artistes like Zubin Mehta, Paul Mauriat, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia (a reknowned flautist from India), Joseph Egar, L. Subramaniam and critics like Victor Rangel Rebeiro (a respected musicologist in the United States of America). The man has been keeping a low – profile since the emergence of A. R. Rahman from his own troupe. He has recently composed the score for Kamal Hassan’s Hey Ram and ‘Janmon ki Jwala’ and the title track are reminders that he is only lying low.

• Best Music Director many times from the governments of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
• He was conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by...
  • Annamalai University of Chidambaram,India in April 1994.
  • The World University of Arizona, USA in June 1994.
  • Madurai Kamaraj University in 1996.
• Isai Gnani first award given by politician Karunanidhi.