The interview which appears below, was originally published on Hindustan Times in February 2003. ©The rights to this material are reserved to the owner. If you have any concerns or comments, please send an email to info@rahmaniac.com.
Hyderabadis are in for a real treat this Valentine’s Day as two towering giants of Indian music, Lata Mangeshkar and A.R. Rahman, will be performing here live. Melody queen Lata and popular young music composer Rahman will enthral the audience at a concert at G.M.C. Balayogi Stadium on Hyderabad’s outskirts.
Called “Unity of Light”, the concert is part of Rahman’s 15-city international tour. But the Hyderabad leg will be a special one because it brings together the two great artistes. Ahead of the concert, Lata and Rahman promised a musical extravaganza and showered praises on each other.
“It is an honour for me to work with a great singer who has been awarded the Bharat Ratna,” said 37-year-old Rahman, referring to India’s top civilian honour that has been conferred on septuagenarian Lata. “He is younger than me in age but elder in work,” said Lata, whose musical career spans 60 years.
Lata, who started singing at age 13, said she had worked with many renowned music directors but found Rahman’s style different. “Though I have done only six songs with him, I have enjoyed working with him. We do the recording without involving a third person. Then we mix the music and chorus. I get full freedom in working with him.” Asked how they worked so well together despite the generation gap, Rahman said music does not know age, caste or religion.
“The age gap is there, but it does not come in the way of our work,” added Lata. And on how he blended his modern rhythms with Lata’s old style of singing, Rahman said: “It is not old and new style. The question is whether it works, and in my experience with Lata it worked.”
Rahman, whose “Bombay Dreams” was a huge success on the British stage, said he was still in two minds about venturing into Hollywood. The music director, whose first score in “Roja” fetched him a national film award in 1992, said he has been holding concerts for the past two years as a way to communicate directly with the people. He has so far held shows in Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
Rahman said music had the power to change minds in these troubled times. “It (music) can bring people together and create goodwill that can overtake anything and make miracles happen.” In Hyderabad, he said, his concert would be an amalgamation of “Telugu, Hindi, English and Tamil songs”.
It would feature many popular singers, including S.P. Balasubramanium, Sonu Nigam, Hariharan, Sukhwinder, Sadhana Sargam and Udit Narayan. Fifty-four musicians, with percussionists, guitarists, keyboard players and playback singers, would enthral the audience from a giant stage at the 30,000-capacity stadium.
