The traditional Tamil songs were only found among the Tamil Brahmins, in the past. However, the things have changed and all music lovers around the world are aware of the rich history and importance of these songs. The Sangam literature or the classical form of Tamil literature consists of a large variety of poems and all these poems were transformed to music. The most ancient narrative poem popularly known as the Cilappatikaram belongs to the post-Sangam age that is between 200CE to 400CE. This period practiced various types of Tamil music.

Music was a vital element of Tamil Saiva compositions including the Thirugnana Sambanthar, the Manikkavasagar and the Appar during the period of Hindu revitalization around CE sixth to tenth centuries. The famous grammatical literature work of Sangam period referred as Tolkappiyam cites the different types of music relating to five different landscapes. The landscapes pertains the different mood of the songs and to offer intensity to the music, it involves musical pann, musical instrument called yaazh and rhythmic or percussion instrument called parai.

The Cilappatikaram traces the music with respect to coherent, orderly and scientific calculations with the organizations of dancers over to the stage to denote the panns and the notes. The most popular musical chapter of Cilappatikaram noted in the history of Tamil songs is a duet song kanal vari.

The basic musical scales evolved from the common musical terminology practiced with Cilappatikaram were termed as the azhaku and mathirai. This terminology refers to the musical pitch and the tiniest element of the audible sound. An initial popular pentatonic scale used by traditional Tamil singers were the mullaippann that incorporates the five main notes termed sa, ri, ga, pa, da. These harmonized scales and notes forms the popular Mohana ragam in Carnatic music.

After Mullaippann, emerged the Sempaalai scale with seven notes that even resulted in the emergence of new panns. From four basic panns, the Tamil artists created around 103 panns that are now widely used in Carnatic music as well as the Tamil filmi songs. The devotional era was also periodically marked with various types of Tamil music. History of Tamil music is really vast and rich for a common person to explain.