The interview which appears below, was originally published on Hindustan Times in July 2006. ©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.
Rahman’s music does talk loud and clear. From the first strains of “Dil hai chota sa” in “Roja” (1992) to the latest hit, “Khalbali hai Khalbali” from “Rang De Basanti,” Rahman’s compositions have always become talking points.
Film director Mani Ratnam was the man who introduced Rahman to the world, and the world was quick to respond. It isn’t just the Indian film-going public who thinks Rahman is a genius; pop king Michael Jackson and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber are also part of his fan base.
“But it wasn’t like this always,” he says. Allah Rakha Rahman wasn’t born with this name. Nor did he change it for the sake of school certificates or anything of the sort. “My name brought back very bad memories. It just didn’t suit me,” says Rahman. “When it started getting too painful to continue with the name I was born with, I changed it.”
The name he was given at birth was A.S. Dileep Kumar. Rahman was born in Chennai, the second of four children, the son of R.K. and Kasturi Shekhar. R K Shekhar was a well-known music arranger and composer in Malayalam cinema. “He was so popular that people didn’t let him be even when he was hospitalized,” says Rahman. “He would compose music from his hospital bed, with a glucose drip in one arm, and a musical instrument in the other.”
It’s this period of his life when his father was ill, that remains etched in Rahman’s memories. “I grew up at that time, I guess,” says Rahman. “He battled god only knows what disease it was for nearly four or five years.”
R.K. Shekhar passed away after years of struggle when Rahman was just nine. And with that, his life took a somewhat filmi turn. With the kids still very young and with no means to feed them, Kasturi started renting out her husband’s musical instruments to keep the family clothed and fed.
“It was a difficult period. We had nobody to look after us. No family. nothing,” remembers Rahman. “We had no support. Dad’s family seemed to have vanished into thin air. It was lonely and sad. But Ma was optimistic.”
Solace arrived in the form of a Sufi saint whom the Shekhar family turned to for much-needed support. “I realized then that when you are in trouble, it isn’t always the materialistic support that you look for, it is the emotional and psychological feeling of security that becomes more important,” says Rahman.
“The murshid (guru) did exactly that. He generated confidence and reinstilled in us the faith that we were losing. He also predicted my future, He told me that one day I would be what I am today.” Was that why the Shekhar family converted? “Things aren’t that simple,” says Rahman. “It wasn’t that one day I suddenly got up and said, hey, let’s convert. It was a gradual progression and came naturally. I embraced Sufi Islam. For me, it wasn’t a religion but a belief. It was spiritualism. It healed me and gave me peace. Today I read the namaz five times a day, not because the religion says I should, but because I feel cleansed after it. It makes me feel closer to God.”
The other thing that makes him feel closer to God is, of course, his music. Music was the foundation of their upper-middle-class household. Rahman first trained under his father, of course, though after Shekhar’s death, he was on his own. Though his ambition was to be a software engineer, his father’s death meant that the family suffered some hard times. It was then that his mother urged him to take up music as a career.
“It was a choice between what you could get at home and what you couldn’t,” says Rahman. “Thanks to my father, we had a huge collection of musical instruments. My mother motivated me to start learning how to play them.” And he did. For some time, Rahman had a packed schedule: school, training, and practice.
But then the hard times became harder, and by the time Rahman had turned 14, he knew he had to take charge and start earning for the family. So he joined composer Illayaraja’s troupe as a keyboard player. By the time he finished high school, life seemed desolate. “I had to make a choice,” he says. “I couldn’t manage academics and earn a livelihood. Between the two, it was clear what I had to do. I was the only breadwinner in my family. I quit the idea of going to college.”
From the age of 16, then, Rahman’s life became “serious.” It revolved around recording studios, practice sessions, and home. In between, he started doing advertising jingles.
“It was a 9 am to 10 pm routine,” he says. “I would start with one studio, record there, and practice in another. Then off I’d go to another studio, to record jingles. It just went on. The only time I could get for myself was after 11 pm. That’s when I made my music. Night time was my time.”
That meant sleep was restricted to the hours between 6 am and 9.30 am. “I couldn’t really afford the luxury of more sleep then,” he says. “Now, it’s a habit. I have become a night person and am at my creative best during those hours.”
But not going to college is Rahman’s lasting regret. And since textbooks and college classes were out of his reach, Rahman decided to get a degree in Western classical music from Trinity College, Oxford. With his heart and soul in music, and as he performed with people like M S Vishwanathan, Ramesh Naidu, Zakir Hussain, and Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan, the learning he got from his Trinity College course stood him in good stead.
“I did it to prove some things to myself,” says Rahman. “I didn’t go to London, this was a distance learning program. Trinity had a center affiliated with it in Chennai, and I did my degree there. But the degree was from Oxford.”
Though he performed with a popular music troupe, film music never really appealed to Rahman. “The sounds were very similar,” he says. “It was very difficult to break out of the monotony, and I couldn’t relate to it.” But he was very interested in jingles. They gave him ample scope for his creative instincts. Over six years, he composed more than 300 jingles for companies like Parry’s, Tata, and Titan. “In a way, the jingles even changed the way I perceived film music,” says Rahman.
Then, once he got into film work, the jingles slowly eased off-which is why the satellite radio company World Space Radio is so pleased that their new signature tune was not only created by A.R. Rahman but that the composer is also the company’s brand ambassador. “It’s like coming full circle,” grins Rahman. “I started with jingles, and here I am with jingles again. And the creative satisfaction still exists.”
In fact, it was his jingles, when he was just another struggling musician, that got Rahman that fateful meeting with film director Mani Ratnam. “I met him at a party that was held after an awards function where I had received the best jingle award,” remembers Rahman. “A mutual friend introduced me to Mani, and he asked me to compose the music for his next film right away.”
Rahman wasn’t inclined to accept the offer at the time, but Mani insisted. Rahman was given an open invitation to create the kind of music he wanted to create but with one caveat: the sounds had to be different. The temptation was too much to resist.
“Mani fascinates me,” says Rahman. “He thinks differently and wants everything to be different. Give him the usual stuff, and he’ll throw it in the bin.”
“Roja” was a landmark in Rahman’s life in more ways than one. Not only did he get into composing music for films for the first time, but it was also at this time A.S. Dileep Kumar changed his name to A.R. Rahman.
And he also opened his own studio. Rahman though, was convinced that “Roja” would mark the end of his career. “I had experimented and was not sure if it would work,” he says. But even so, he continued to take the risk. “At that time, wherever I looked or rather, listened, youngsters were listening to Bryan Adams or Phil Collins. Our compositions didn’t have shelf value. The generation then wanted an international feel. I felt that was the right time to experiment, and luckily it worked.”
The timing certainly helped. When Rahman arrived, the music industry was going through a crisis. Older music composers were retiring, and younger composers lacked innovation. “Roja” was a massive hit, and Rahman didn’t lose the opportunity to follow it up with a number of other extremely popular compositions for films like “Bombay,” “Rangeela,” “Dil Se,” and “Taal.” The huge sales of these albums prompted movie producers to take music more seriously.
Today, Rahman feels, the music industry is coming of age. It has not only adapted to and accepted new sounds, but it is also making an effort to present it in a bigger fashion. “I came at a time when we didn’t have much to boast about in terms of great musical software,” he says. “There was no knowledge of the nuances. Today, things are different.”
One film with his experimental music was all it took for Rahman to be declared a success. But it wasn’t all hunky-dory. Criticism, accusations, and doubt were mixed with praise. “After ‘Roja’ came ‘Bombay,'” he explains. “People said I had become repetitive. They said my sounds were similar. I couldn’t understand what they meant. Anybody who has a specific musical style will always sound the same.”
And what about the accusations that he was more of a technician than a musician? He laughs out loud. “It’s like saying that a writer can write bestsellers because he has mastered the keyboard.”
Rahman’s style was unique at the time because of its distinct Western notes. He mixed world sounds with Indian and made music that was essentially A.R. Rahman. “I learned the songs from ‘Sound Of Music’ and ‘My Fair Lady’ at school,” he says. “I learned ‘do re mi’ just the way I learned ‘sa re ga.’ I blended the two.”
As he settled into his career, he was influenced by the work and practices of other musicians, picking up one thing or the other from each of them. “From Illayaraja who made three songs a day, to Naushad Saab who did only 100 films in all, and from someone like Michael Jackson to Andrew Lloyd Webber, every musician has something distinct about him.”
But he does believe that the music industry in the West is better able to create and manage the impact of the sounds it creates than the music industry in India. “We make a song here, it gets released and then it’s over and done with,” says Rahman. “But there, you make a song, and it goes on to become a cult. Look at ‘Bombay Dreams.’ It was done five years ago, and it still runs to full houses. It still gets awards.”
No wonder then, that he’s more excited about his latest Hollywood project, “Elizabeth – The Golden Age,” with Shekhar Kapoor, than his Bollywood projects. “I am doing a few films such as ‘Guru,’ ‘Akbar-Jodha,’ ‘Chamki,’ and ‘Rockstar’ here, but I am very excited about ‘Elizabeth.’ It is going to be my first-ever album completely in English.” But because his music requires a certain sensibility to understand, Rahman isn’t necessarily the film industry’s first choice as a composer. “Why do you think I don’t have too many films?” he asks. “Only those producers who know and want my sounds come to me.”
“The problem was with the theme song of the film, ‘Hum hain is pal ya haan,'” says Rahman. “I was told that it was to be picturized in a certain way, but what finally appeared on screen had no similarity to the concept with which I had made the song. I still feel that changing the theme wasn’t really a decision that could be made in one day. So I did get a little angry. But since then, Subhashji and I have made up. I have just completed another of his projects, ‘Kisna.’ It had some beautiful songs. Aishwarya (Rai) is the heroine, and the music is very interesting indeed.”
For a man who essentially believes his music is a way to get closer to God, such apprehensions about presentation seem natural. “My music has definite strains of Sufism. I would like to believe that it is closer to God. The songs and lyrics of poets like Baba Bulle Shah, Amir Khusro, and Rumi have motivated me. They are love songs, but the lover is God. But when they’re used in films, things get very tacky. For ‘Dil Se,’ for instance, we changed the original lyrics of ‘Thaiya Thaiya’ to ‘Chaiya Chaiya.’ But of course, the theme remains the same.”
Was it this passion and belief in Sufism that prompted him to start singing as well? “No, it really wasn’t that. I started singing ‘Bombay.’ ‘Humma Humma’ was my first number. It did well, so I guess people wanted me to sing again. But honestly, I am better when I just make songs, not when I sing them.”
So who are his favorite singers? “That’s a difficult one. You are putting me on slippery ground,” he laughs. “We have a lot of good singers, but I haven’t yet found that perfect voice. Among female singers, Shreya Ghoshal and Madhushree are different, but among the men, I am still looking out.”
“It has been a long journey,” Rahman had said at the beginning of this interview, and that it’s certainly proved to be. Today, he’s more in control of his life than he’s ever been before. His family is a secure cocoon, and when he isn’t working, he’d rather be with them.
“Like my music, my family rejuvenates me,” he says. “My three kids, Khatija, 11, Rahima, 8, and Ameen, 3½, have been initiated into music. They learn the piano and Hindustani classical music.” His son practices with him, his daughters prefer to learn with Rahman’s sister, Saira.
“There was a point where I really didn’t care much after making a song,” he says. “But friends told me to be a little more concerned. Now I feel they were right when they asked me to be certain how a song was packaged. Finally, the impact is made by what is presented on screen. If a song isn’t presented well, it loses its meaning. The audience expects a certain quality from me, and it is my responsibility to deliver that quality.”
Rahman is a name that resonates globally. With his exceptional talent, he has conquered the music industry, gaining admirers from all corners of the world, including pop icon Michael Jackson and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Rahman’s journey from a struggling musician to a celebrated composer is a testament to his passion and creativity.
His unique blend of Western and Indian sounds, inspired by Sufi influences, sets his music apart, leaving an everlasting impact on the hearts of his listeners. As he continues to create beautiful melodies, Rahman’s legacy as a musical genius only grows stronger.
