National Film Award for Best Music Direction
The National Film Award for Best Music Direction is an honour presented annually at the National Film Awards by the National Film Development Corporation of India to a musician who has composed the best score for films produced within the Indian film industry. The award was first introduced at the 15th National Film Awards in 1967. At the 42nd National Film Awards, an award for "Best Background Score" was instituted. It was however discontinued after that, and it was not until 2009 that the category was re-introduced. Later, during the 70th National Film Awards both the categories — Best Background Score and Best Background Music were clubbed together and named as "Best Background Music". A total of 51 awards—including award for Best Background music—to 40 different composers.
Although the Indian film industry produces films in around 20 languages and dialects, the recipients of the award include those who have worked in seven major languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada and Marathi.
The first recipient of the award was K. V. Mahadevan who was honoured for his composition in the Tamil film Kandan Karunai. A. R. Rahman is the most frequent winner having won 7 awards. A. R. Rahman is also the only composer to have received a national award in his debut movie itself. Ilaiyaraaja has won it 5 times. Jaidev and Vishal Bhardwaj have won it three times each. Four musicians—B. V. Karanth, K.V. Mahadevan, Satyajit Ray, Johnson and M. M. Keeravani have won the award twice each. Ilaiyaraaja is the only composer to have won the award for achieving in three different languages — Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. While A. R. Rahman won the award for performing in two different languages — Tamil and Hindi Roja.
Johnson won the inaugural "Best Background Score" award—for Sukrutham—in 1994. When the award was reinstated in 2009, Ilaiyaraaja won it for the Malayalam film Pazhassi Raja.