The interview which appears below, was originally published on India West in February 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.
The superstar was down-to-earth, with an easy laugh, self-deprecating air, and an ingratiating willingness to speak from the heart. A.R. Rahman traced his career from pre-Roja to post-Rang De Basanti in an intimate, satisfying onstage chat at Stanford University’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium Feb. 14 during the school’s Pan-Asian Music Festival.
Visiting ethnomusicology professor Natalie Sarrazin prefaced the conversation by tracing the history of what film music was like before a 25-year-old Rahman burst on the scene in 1991 with Roja.
Sarrazin offered a fascinating look at the history of Hindi film music with its penchant for absorbing international influences and its unwritten rules. Each example was illuminated with a charming snippet of video, from films such as Shree 420, Sholay and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge.
“There are certain ‘codes’ – iconic sound images – that recur in Indian film music,” she said. “The timbre of the Indian female voice is quite prominent, you hear large orchestras and soaring violins, and a wall of sound … rising violins are a code for a love song.”
Rahman turned it all upside down, she explained. “The first thing he did was to take the orchestral introduction and completely get rid of it.” Cueing a scene from the Tamil film Gentleman (Rahman’s Tamil compositions were not overlooked during the evening), she demonstrated how Rahman brought in one instrument at a time, creating musical tension.
To cheers and shouts from the audience, Sarrazin moved on to musical scenes from Rahman’s scores that have become icons themselves: Mani Ratnam’s Roja (the witty “Rukmani Rukmani”), Bombay (“Tu Hi Re”), the Hindi version of Yuva and Dil Se (“Chhaiyya Chhaiyya”); Tehzeeb and Saathiya.
“He often puts two incongruous styles together that somehow seem to work,” Sarrazin observed, with a clip from Lagaan’s English/Hindi song “O Re Chori” and Sushmita Sen’s jittery “Shakalaka Baby” (Nayak), which was one of his hit songs reworked to great effect in “Bombay Dreams.”
As much as his fans and fellow artists love his music, Rahman is notorious for taking his time on each project. “I have a nice relationship with all directors, but I drive the producers crazy,” he joked. “Mani [Ratnam] tells me the story that he told me for Roja, ‘I need five songs, and I need them yesterday.’ I was gone for three months.”
Working with lyricists, too, has its quirks. “Sometimes Gulzar-sahib or Javed-sahib will give me just a title. Other times, they want the tune first, then they’ll give the lyrics.”
One of the reasons Roja was such a departure from the style of music at the time was the way it was recorded, explained Rahman. “At the time, there were these huge recording halls, with 50 violins,” he said. “But I was doing commercials in my own studio. When Mani wanted me to do the music, I said, ‘Let’s do it at my place.'”
“I called my musician friends to come for the session, but at the last minute they all ditched me! I think they had all been offered more money somewhere that day,” he said, laughing along with the audience.
“But my mother said, ‘God will provide.’ I ended up recording [the instrumental version of ]’Choti Si Asha’ by myself, on a keyboard and sequencer. I thought I’d need to bring in 50 violins, but Mani said ‘No, just be yourself. Follow your instincts.'”
Since he got his start writing ad jingles, wasn’t it intimidating to take on the soundtrack to an entire three-hour film, asked Sarrazin. “I was terrified in the beginning,” replied Rahman. “But then I learned that if I could write a piece of music that was 30 seconds long, then all I’d have to do is repeat it!”
He’s not afraid to repeat what works. Rahman’s haunting, cello-heavy Bombay theme, used to poignant effect in that film and in Deepa Mehta’s Fire, also cropped up in the Nicolas Cage vehicle Lord of War. And when he was first approached for “Bombay Dreams” by impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber, he said, “I decided, I won’t tell them I’ll use my old film songs!” (“Ishq Bina” and other hits were reworked in English for the play.)
Rahman traced the history of some of his best-loved pieces, such as the ambitious Vande Mataram project and “Chhaiyya Chhaiyya” (“That was based on a Sufi song from Bulleh Shah, sung originally by Abida Parvin”).
Superlatives follow Rahman around like a spotlight: one of India’s most prolific and top-selling composers; reportedly the world’s top-selling artist, with many millions of records sold, he is now one of the world’s most border-bending artists as well.
Just before the Stanford talk, Rahman had jetted from Toronto, where he was overseeing previews of the highly anticipated, lavishly mounted stage show “Lord of the Rings,” which will open in March.
“It’s the most exciting project I’ve ever worked on,” he observed. “They have 18 big hydraulic things, and people on stilts. It’s amazing.”
Classically trained at Trinity College of Music in Britain, Rahman, a Padmashree honoree, brought an entirely new sound to the London and Broadway stage with his sparkling score to “Bombay Dreams” (a touring production opened in Costa Mesa, Calif., Feb. 22).
Indeed, the morning after this event, Rahman boarded a plane for Hong Kong, where he led a performance of his cutting-edge “3rd Dimension” show Feb. 18. Rahman’s latest tour has the audience don 3D glasses as vocalists such as Alka Yagnik, Udit Narayan, Daler Mehndi, Shankar Mahadevan, Chitra and Hariharan perform his hits.
Rahman has composed the music for a Chinese film (Warriors of Heaven and Earth) and is at work on a symphonic piece for the Birmingham Orchestra that he acknowledges could take years to complete. He’s also at work on Mani Ratnam’s next film, the Hindi/English Guru, and several Tamil films, almost 20 pending projects in all.
The evening was presented as part of the Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival, organized by religious studies director Linda Hess and the school’s department of music and the Asian Religions and Cultures Initiative. Jindong Cai, Stanford Symphony Orchestra conductor and artistic director of the Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival, served as master of ceremonies for the evening, which also featured performances of Rahman compositions by the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and by the Stanford Taiko group, and concluded with a public question and answer session with Rahman.
During the Q&A, the audience’s questions spanned the gamut from Rahman’s influences, to his career, to his philosophy on music.
Asked where he’s going next, Rahman responded with the ease that had characterized his entire evening: “Music has no destination. It’s endless. Music is the thing that unites people. There’s so much hatred in the world, that I’m just blessed to be a musician.”
