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Raj S. Rangarajan
Allah Rakha Rahman (ARR) has finally reached. But does he think so?
With two Oscars in the same year – one for Best Original Music Score and another for Best Original Song, “AR” as he’s affectionately known in the industry, has put India on the Hollywood map for music. At 43, looks like he’s just getting started. Rahman said recently, “I have many more notes to compose and create.”
On the first day of this year, 2009, visually-impaired children appeared on a television station in Chennai and asked the music maestro some pertinent, inspiring questions. One of the first questions was, “since our world is basically ‘sound’ we feel we need to ask you what is your definition of sound.”
Known for his unassuming earthiness and willingness to work with anyone whether an accomplished artiste or a potential wiz kid, AR said, “it could be anything as long as you learn to dream.” Among the words he used to describe the experience were “ragam”, soul, language, spiritual, mind’s eye. “Music with its methodology or ‘isai’ (notes) is universal but is difficult to describe. Let me just say, music happens. It could be the pitter-patter of rain, birds in a forest, the strain of a tambura. It could be human connectivity between souls where one doesn’t need to see: all one needs is an open mind and a fertile imagination.”
At the 81st Annual Academy Awards last month ARR attributed his success to his mother’s blessings and his decision to always choose love over hate. Born a Hindu, A.S. Dileep Kumar converted to Islam at 23 and took over the name, Rahman. This keyboard artist, pianist, synthesizer, guitarist et al. was first recognized for his talent with a National Award when AR was merely 26. Around this time, based in Chennai he obtained a distance learning degree in western classical music from the Trinity College of Music, London. At a SAJA (South Asian Journalists Association) blog radio interview in December 2008, AR emphasized how music is often needed to express anger or perhaps change a tense situation with a sudden shocking sound. In passing, he clarified that his music degree was obtained in Chennai, not in London.
Ph.Ds Comment on Rahman To obtain an intellectual dimension to Rahman’s wide range of talents this writer spoke with two doctorates – Dr. Natalie Sarrazin of College at Brockport (SUNY) in upstate New York, and Dr. Pavitra Sundar of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire – both of whom specialize in Rahman’s music and on Bollywood.
Sarrazin says, “AR’s light, jazz style borrows heavily from other styles and as a student of his music I am yet trying to figure out if he has a signature style, for he has this large repertoire (West African, South African, Japanese, wrap and hip hop). He happily borrows from folk music in a seamless Hindu/Muslim/western node in a post-modern identity. To a question if AR will continue to rule the waves, Sarrazin says, “only one (musical) giant at a time – remember – we had S.D. Burman then we had R.D. Burman.” Talking of giants, AR’s one ambition was to sing with Lata Mangeshkar which he fulfilled when he performed the duet with her in
Rang De Basanti. Dr. Sundar agrees that Rahman is a significant musical phenomenon. He has almost single-handedly changed the sound of Hindi film music (specially since he produces much of his music on a synthesizer). Hindi cinema had not heard such a distinct, catchy sound – and such a shift from the current style or sound of film music – since Bappi Lahiri and his disco beats of late ’70s.
Conceding his weakness for the keyboard, AR in fact told his young admirers in January how music has to be adapted to the period – whether it’s a movie on Subash Chandra Bose or Bhagat Singh or Shekhar Kapur’s
Elizabeth, the Golden Age – just as costumes have to be adapted for differing periods. AR’s versatility and international flavor is evidenced with his score for
Warriors of Heaven and Earth, a Chinese film as also his creation for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage presentation of ‘Bombay Dreams’ in New York few years back.
Sundar’s dissertation entitled, “Sounding the Nation: The Musical Imagination of Bollywood Cinema” examined how the music of Hindi cinema (i.e., not just the lyrics and visuals of film songs, but the instrumentation, arrangements, voices, etc.) draws on and expresses ideas about gender, sexual, racial, and national identity.
Sarrazin’s thesis was on Rajasthani folk music that spoke of trance music of one of the local ‘devatas’ with analysis and rituals. At his powwow with aspiring singers in January, AR elaborated, “just as music has no limits nor sound have any bounds, folk music or folk dance is universal. There is a certain magic when we think of folk music whether it is Tamil, Gujarati or Turkish or even Irish folk music.”
Jai Ho – Not AR’s Best By many accounts in India and the West ‘Jai ho’ was not Rahman’s best musical effort – a sentiment echoed by both Sarrazin and Sundar in that Natalie feels AR had a better score in Lagaan (‘
Mitwa’ was nominated in 2002 but didn’t win). Adds Pavitra, “it didn't work for me as a song. I thought ‘O Saya’ the other song that won him an Oscar nomination was great, though. It really captured the excitement and frenzy of the chase through the slums which the camera captured dynamically.”
Commenting on AR’s creativity, Natalie says, “what resonates in India is not necessarily resonating in the diaspora. Rahman was the first person to change the musical language of Bollywood and around the time when the Indian economy was turning around in the early ’90s, home video sales were also on the increase even in the U.K. and coincidentally, AR was a fresh sound on the airwaves.” He helped introduce Bollywood music to the rest of the world and what “I would call musical theater.” Sarrazin teaches musicology and the piano, has studied classical music theoretically and created courses for Bollywood. Her book,
Indian Music in the Classroom, published in 2008, covers the gamut from Hindi-Pop to bhangra to the bhajan to the Urdu ghazal.
Rahman shows great respect for the director and the scriptwriter since “I have to base my music and nuances on what the movie aims to accomplish and more so since the sound track plays a vital part in many Indian movies.” To a question if Rahman’s success is a mere flash in the pan, Pavitra Sundar hails him as a leading composer in Hindi and Tamil cinema since the mid-1990s (Mani Ratnam’s
Roja in Tamil was released in 1992, a film that made him a household name in urban India). He’s also good at “diversifying” – at finding new avenues for his work (e.g., his leap from advertising to cinema to Broadway) and forging new connections with prominent musical performers from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to Andrew Lloyd Weber to M.I.A., already popular in the West now.
But Rahman attributes his success to his basic multi-culturality. He says, life is about human redemption and the film Slumdog Millionaire brings hope and love and a certain positivity in today’s hard times. His mantlepiece is surely fighting for space with a legendary amount of awards from all over including Indian government’s civilian honor of the “Padmashree” in 2000. For India’s 50th year of independence AR created “Vande Mataram.” Also legendary are his hits in Tamil (
Roja, Bombay, Alaipayuthey, Kandukondein Kandukondein) and in Hindi (
Dil Se, Taal, Lagaan, Yuva) – to name a few.
According to Sundar, A. R. Rahman’s and
Slumdog Millionaire’s Oscar awards signal the U.S. mainstream’s first real foray into popular Indian musical consciousness. Hindi cinema has been attempting to lure audiences in the West (mostly South Asians in the diaspora) for years. Films such as
Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake, and
Lagaan drew the attention of art house audiences in North America and “I should say that critics in the U.S. lauded the music of all of these films. The Kronos Quartet’s album with Asha Bhosle, ‘You’ve Stolen My Heart’ gave audiences a taste of R. D. Burman’s music, but none of these films or music albums, caught the imagination of mainstream U.S. media and the blog-world the way
Slumdog did.” Significantly, Rahman’s recent win is not the first Indian attempt to capture the U.S. market – it’s actually the first time such an attempt has been granted recognition by a Western audience.
From Amjad Ali Khan to Gulzar to Grammy winner and soul singer, John Legend (who performed Peter Gabriel’s nominated song from the animation movie
Wall-E in February) it has been all aces for AR. The stage adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings with music co-composed by Rahman was voted one of the 10 greatest musicals of the last 30 years in an online poll conducted by Dress Circle, a website that covers theater in the U.K.
Rahman has been involved with charitable causes as well. In 2004, he was appointed the global ambassador of the Stop TB Partnership, a project by the World Health Organization (WHO). As a producer on the single ‘We can make it Better’ by Don Asian alongside Mukhtar Sahota, he showed his soft side with all the proceeds going to tsunami victims, as did his 2004 tsunami relief concert in India. The A R Rahman Foundation, launched in 2001, aims at eradicating poverty and in this pursuit, his song, ‘Pray for me Brother’ is quite popular. Rahman has opened a western conservatory in Chennai where he trains about 100 students on the ABCs of music and music scores. His love for people and the underdog are constantly being demonstrated.
As AR reiterates, “Rhythm, melody and the resonance that a listener experiences is the best feedback a person needs. Whether the composition is spiritual or light, whether it’s a fusion of Carnatic music and western or a song by a fisherman about to launch his early catch, I have to think creatively.”
[Raj S. Rangarajan is a New York based freelance writer. He covers trend stories on art, reviews books and films for media based in New York, Toronto, Republic of Korea and India.]
