The interview which appears below, was originally published on Filmfare in November 2004. ©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.
Don’t expect A.R. Rahman’s latest work for Swades to sweep you up on a wave of irresistible rhythms, have you moving to his trademark beat, and leave you breathless. No, this is a clear, stunningly simple sound that urges you to sit back, let the tunes wash over you gently, and savor them slowly. It is, really, nothing like what we have to come to expect from Rahman.
“Sometimes,” murmurs the composer,” you feel you’ve done enough of something and you want to go further. This is one of the routes. Because technology has made it so simple today for anybody to produce a fast number or a remix.
You get a PC, get the software, pre-set the rhythms and you’re ready to go. What took me weeks to do for Rangeela can be done so easily now. So it’s not challenging for me as a composer to do a score like Rangeela or Humse Hai Muqabla anymore. When a fast number becomes a hit, I feel good, but not within my heart as a composer. If an album like Swades becomes popular, I will feel good because I know I’m going in the right direction.”
We’re talking on the eve of the album’s release when its popularity has yet to be determined, so I ask, are you happy in your heart with what you’ve done for Swades?
“I think we’ve arrived as a team. Because when you see the songs, they intrigue you. You don’t say, okay, I know what’s going to happen next. And the songs make the script go further.”
Did you spend much time on the script?
“No,” he says wryly, “I don’t have the patience to read scripts. Ashutosh (Gowariker) told me the script; I gave him some eight or nine ideas. He kept listening to them and arrived at four or five. Javed saab (Javed Akhtar) did the lyrics and in about three or four weeks we had the whole thing ready. We also had one tune— Yunhi chala chala —that was part of the collection I’d given him for Lagaan.
Only one tune remained to be done— Yeh Des. By then it was December- January, Ashutosh was shooting in Panchgani and couldn’t come to Chennai, and so I packed up all my equipment and took it to the location. Javedsaab would be in one room, writing the lyrics and I in another, composing, with Ashutosh and Shah Rukh nearby in their rooms. When we were done, we got the singers Madhushree and Vijayaprakash down to Panchgani and we did the final voice recording in the hotel room!”
And you can’t tell the difference?
“No, you can’t,” he laughs delightedly. “I knew it was a much more challenging script than Lagaan. Because when you tell a story with a message you have to be very careful. People don’t want to listen to a message and if you force it on them they won’t listen to it. That’s one thing I’m very careful about. Whether it’s the music or lyrics, one shouldn’t be patronizing. If you’re doing a patriotic song like Vande Mataram, you can’t say, Oh, this is my country—that’s very boring. And that’s where the challenge lies.
“Also, I’ve used quite a few classical ragas in Swades because they can arouse an emotion in your heart instantly. They’re tried-and- tested in that sense, but you have to use them intelligently to make them accessible. Yeh tara woh tara is one of those attempts—I’ve worked with Raag Kalavati but given it a commercial slant. Swades has challenged me a lot as a composer.”
But clearly, given him a great deal of satisfaction too. Rahman and Ashutosh Gowariker, who worked so successfully on Lagaan earlier, share a working relationship that seems to suit both well.
“Because,” explains Rahman, “It is not like a director telling a composer, `Okay, compose the song and send it to me.’ Ashutosh doesn’t work like that and I don’t work like that. He wants to see me play each note, he wants to see me press the record button, he wants to thoroughly enjoy the process. That why he comes to Chennai to spend time with me. It’s an amazing quality of his and it helps me too, because his reactions tell me which route he likes and which he doesn’t.”
So you’re okay with having a tune rejected?
“Of course. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself inside a shell, not knowing what’s happening outside. I’m in my own world and the director is the mirror for what he wants to give the public, it’s his vision for the movie,” he says.
Did Ashutosh reject any tunes outright?
“But I give everyone that liberty,” exclaims Rahman. “Please reject, I tell them. Because I don’t give them just one tune, I give them 15 to 20 ideas. Not complete ideas; it could be just a feel or I could be playing a song or humming it. They can select from that and say, Oh, this is a nice route, let’s take it. It’s good for me too, because each score then mirrors the director’s taste, making each album different.
See, it’s the initial stages that are tough, because that’s when you centre on a certain idea and try to satisfy the person who wants the music—whether it is Ashutosh or the director of Lord Of The Rings .”
Rahman pauses, looks at his well-kept hands that are so at variance with his tousled, boyish look. “Sometimes,” he adds slowly, ” I override the director and say, No, I don’t want to take this route. I have done that for a couple of Tamil films—said, `No, it’s too vulgar, I don’t want to do it. If you want to go ahead, please find another composer.’ I have gone to that extent.”
So whom does you compose for in the final analysis— yourself or the director you have to satisfy?
“When I compose, the director is not sitting with me. So it is done for me. It is done with all my prayers and good intentions and then given to the director.” You’re talking almost as if it were like prasad being offered, I remark. “It is, in a way,” he affirms. “I don’t just sit down and say, Oh, let’s make a tune. It is possible to do that but I don’t work like that. I like to make it a spiritual exercise for myself.”
Which perhaps partly explains why Rahman has famously kept many a producer and director waiting till he is ready to begin a project or deliver for it.
“You have to give a project your 100 per cent,” he emphasises. “People like Ashutosh understand that. They say, okay, finish this much within this pool of time. So there’s no pressure on me; I don’t feel, I have to give this in tomorrow. Ashutosh works like that too. His movie was supposed to be released on August 15, but he’s still cutting it in end-September. He’s making it better, which is good. How can you allot a certain amount of time and say, I will cut a three-and-a-half-hour film in seven days?”
Or compose this many songs in these many days?
“It can work that way; I’m not saying it can’t. But I don’t want to,” says Rahman firmly.
I tell him of film-maker’s Mani Ratnam’s explanation for the composer’s notorious delays: “Rahman will not give you a song unless he is happy with it.” True?
“Yes, it’s true,” he asserts. “See, there are different ways of doing it. What some composers do is have a team of assistants. One takes care of rhythm arrangements, one takes care of the strings and so on. You give your assistants a basic tune and they do the rest in a couple of days. But the feel will never be yours. A little note or a bit of percussion they might add could irritate you. If you become insensitive to that, then your music will take the shape of your assistant’s vision, not yours.”
“I like to be in control. Sometimes people complain about my music, sometimes they say it’s fantastic. I would rather have that than take the credit for somebody else’s work or say, `Oh, my assistant screwed it up,’ when there’s criticism.”
Have there ever been times when you have, under pressure, given in a tune you were not completely happy with, I ask him. Rahman doesn’t soft-pedal the issue:
“It never used to happen earlier. I would say, let’s get it right. But in the last three years, I’ve been traveling not for three or four days but two weeks and more—so most directors get paranoid and tell me, please finish my music before you go. I’ve managed so far, though I think I’ve suffered around 10 percent. And when that happens I feel a bit down. That’s the reason I’ve kept away from certain projects.”
It’s pressures like this that have held up his own albums, he confesses.
“After Vande Mataram, I always wanted to do another one. I would compose a tune and say, let me keep it for my album. But it always ended up in a film. There’s always some pressure and I say, okay, take this tune, I’ll do another one for my album later. That’s why it’s six years now and I haven’t been able to do another album.”
Haven’t you kept anything for yourself?
“No; when the pressure comes, you want to give it away,” he smiles ruefully but without bitterness.
Given your reluctance to compromise, how then do you handle multiple projects simultaneously, going from assignments as diverse as Swades and say, Lord Of The Rings?
“Oh, it is the most difficult thing to do, the most difficult,” he sighs. “Because it takes me five days to tune out of an Indian sensibility and switch to a Western one.” Then grins, “It’s becoming easier though. Earlier it used to take me two weeks. Hopefully I’ll get it down to two days or even one day.” He adds, “That’s why I don’t do too many shows. They are a different mind spectrum altogether. You have to be on your toes, constantly alert; everything has to be at your finger-tips. That not a good environment for a composer.
Why so?
“Because you need to have all your old compositions ready in your mind. But I need a vacuum to work on a new project. I need to clean out my mind, flush out everything. That why I can do only one show in two years or so, even though they offer a lot of money.”
No time for an album, no time for shows… do you ever have the time to compose any music for yourself or your kids?
He thinks awhile, turns the thought over in his mind, then replies, “No. When you go home, you switch off music. You have other priorities.”
Can you switch off music completely?
“Yes, unless I see something on TV,” he says. “So when I jump back into my work, it gives me a perspective, it freshens me.”
Have your children ever asked you to compose a tune for them?
“No, but they ask me to teach them,” he lets on. “Strangely one day, my daughter sat at the keyboard and said, teach me the Airtel tune. So I did. I think both my kids may start on piano lessons shortly.”
And do you sing to them too?
Rahman grins unabashedly. “When I go to work, it’s already night and when I go to sleep, they’re ready to go to school. The only time we get together is when we go on a holiday or to a spiritual place. And that’s more character building – don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t scribble on the walls. There’s no time to teach them music.”
So I presume there’d be no point asking whether your wife has you singing her romantic songs either, I venture.
Rahman chuckles loudly, smiles broadly and gets up. The interview has wandered outside his comfort zone. We’re through.
