‘Ilaya Nila’ fame ace guitarist Chandrasekar is no more

Noted guitarist R. Chandrasekar, who passed away on March 8, played for Ilaiyaraaja’s hit numbers including ‘Paadi Vaa Thendrale’ and ‘Paadum Vaanampadi’

Noted guitarist R. Chandrasekar, who played for songs such as ‘Ilaya Nila Pozhigirathey’,Paadi Vaa Thendrale, and Paadum Vaanampadi in the music of maestro Ilaiyaraaja, died on Wednesday, March 8, 2023 night. He was 79 and is survived by his son Ranjith, a music director.

“Ilaiyaraaja is an ace guitarist. As a composer, he wanted to highlight the guitar’s beauty. The C sharp minor chord sounds like an added chord and in that song’s third background, the open E string sounds beautiful in the combination of notes,” Chandrasekar had said about the guitar part for the song Ilaya Nila from the film Payanangal Mudivathillai in an interview to The Hindu.

Chandrasekar was the elder brother of drummer R. Purusothaman, who also worked as a conductor for Ilaiyaraaja.

Chandrasekar, an engineer by training, started his career with music director P.S. Divakar. He was also an accomplished keyboard and mouth organ player, who introduced modern musical instruments and computers for composing music. It was he recorded the music for the film Hey Ram for Ilaiyaraaja in Hungary.

He and Purusothaman worked for music directors including K.V. Mahadevan and M.S. Viswanathan. While Purusothaman remained in the troupe of Ilaiyaraaja as a conductor, Chandrasekar worked in Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi films. He was a favourite of R.D. Burman, Laxmikant-Pyarilal and Bappi Lahiri.