Memes, Música, Mutações

Inaye Thedi (1981), Kalakaar (1983), Baaghi (1990), Dil (1990), Love (1991), Beta (1992), Vansh (1992), Bol Radha Bol (1992), Anari (1993), Virasat (1997), Dikkiloona (2021), Manjummel Boys (2024), Dude (2025), Lokah Chapter 1 (2025), Coolie (2025) and Good Bad Ugly (2025) have little in common at first glance. They span four decades, three languages and an unruly mix of genres—from earnest Malayalam melodrama and Bollywood family sagas to survival thrillers and contemporary pan-Indian blockbusters. Yet beneath this cinematic diversity runs a remarkably consistent thread: the music of Ilaiyaraaja. He, notably, did not compose the music for any of these films. Their soundtracks drew—openly or obliquely—on Ilaiyaraaja’s musical archive. Other music directors have copied, adapted, or taken inspiration from his compositions to varying degrees. In some cases, the borrowing is almost note-for-note; in others, it takes the form of remixes that alter tempo, arrangement, or mood. Elsewhere, only a recognisable opening phrase or refrain is retained, with subsequent sections substantially reworked. In still other instances, familiar melodies are redeployed in contexts radically different from their original narrative or emotional settings.

The persistence of his melodies long after the films that first carried them have faded offers an instructive lesson in cultural survival. To understand it, one must look beyond cinema and borrow a concept from evolutionary biology. Richard Dawkins’s idea of the “meme”—a cultural unit that spreads, mutates and survives through replication—provides a useful lens. Ilaiyaraaja’s songs are not merely popular compositions; they are high-fitness memes.

Most film songs are fragile creatures. They depend heavily on their original “vehicles”: a charismatic star, elaborate choreography, fashionable production or a narrative moment calibrated to its time. When tastes shift or stars dim, the songs often vanish with them. Ilaiyaraaja’s music behaves differently. Its melodic cores are compact, self-sufficient and unusually resilient. Stripped down to a whistle, sung unaccompanied, or reorchestrated for a modern soundscape, the tune remains instantly recognisable. This explains how a melody can travel from a 1983 Hindi remake like Kalakar to a 2021 Tamil comedy such as Dikkiloona without losing its force.

In memetic terms, the composer’s work excels along three axes: longevity, fecundity and fidelity. Nearly three decades after his commercial peak, his music continues to circulate, having survived the transition from vinyl to cassettes, compact discs, streaming platforms and now the compressed, hyper-circulated world of internet clips and memes. It has crossed linguistic and regional borders with ease, fuelling Bollywood’s borrowings in the 1990s—Baaghi, Bol Radha Bol, Anari—and re-emerging in today’s pan-Indian cinema. Even when altered in tempo, mood or instrumentation, the underlying melodic “instruction set” remains intact.

This capacity for mutation without dilution is precisely what Susan Blackmore and Daniel Dennett identify as a hallmark of successful memes. Ilaiyaraaja’s music displays an exceptional tolerance for variation. It invites homage, parody, remix and reduction. The recent success of Manjummel Boys, which redeployed a decades-old melody to devastating emotional effect, illustrates that these songs are not museum pieces. They are living cultural organisms, capable of acquiring new meanings in new environments.

            For contemporary filmmakers, drawing on such music is therefore more than an exercise in nostalgia. It is a calculated attempt to harness a proven cultural replicator—one already embedded in collective memory and primed for emotional resonance. The cluster of big-ticket releases of 2025, from Coolie to Good Bad Ugly, suggests that Ilaiyaraaja’s appeal is not diminishing with time. Far from being a relic of the late twentieth century, his music continues to evolve, circulate and infect new audiences. In an industry obsessed with novelty, that may be the most enduring success of all.