Today’s directors don’t deserve Maestro’s music in their films: Bala

Bala, the mercurial producer-director, has opined that not many of today’s directors deserve Maestro Ilaiyaraaja’s music in their films. “Ilaiyaraaja is a legend and a film-maker has to sense his amazing composing qualities to go and seek his music,” Bala said. Bala was taking part along with Maestro Ilaiyaraaja and others in a discussion on background music in films held at the L.V. Prasad Film & Television Training Centre inside Prasad Studios for the Centre’s students. It was an interactive session and Bala was asked a few questions by Ilaiyaraaja. Replying to Ilaiyaraaja’s question of “Have you ever acted out a particular emotion to the stars you had directed?”, Bala said that he had done so but only to a limited extent. “To a few actors and actresses, I had played out music from your albums such as Nothing But Wind and had asked them to emote as per the sound. “Such emotion-filled sequences would look great on-screen once your background music is added during the editing stage,” said Bala and added that ironically, not many of today’s directors are ‘qualified’ enough to explain the sequences to Ilaiyaraaja and ask for background music. “Except the legendary K. Viswanath, not many directors qualify on this count,” he said.