The interview which appears below, was originally published on Sun Times in June 2007. ©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.
A.R. Rahman is not a household name in the United States, but to millions of South Asians in India and abroad he’s the superstar music man behind the sound of the sprawling, lavish Bollywood films they love. There, where the soundtrack is often considered more important than the plot, Rahman has broken all sorts of records — he’s scored more than 70 films and sold more than 100 million albums.
But Rahman says he had no intention of “cashing in on what I’ve already done.” In recent years, the prolific composer also has scored Hollywood movies and written the music for two high-profile musicals — “Bombay Dreams” and now “The Lord of the Rings,” which opens June 19 in London.
The busy composer also occasionally performs his music in concerts that are heavy on Bollywood spectacle. That “wow” factor will be present when Rahman makes his Chicago debut Saturday at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates.
An eclectic spectacle
Dig a little deeper, though, and the full spectacle of the performance is unveiled — 45 musicians, 12 singers and 20 dancers, plus a laser and 3-D light show. It’s all a showcase for Rahman’s eclectic world music, which fuses folk music from China, India and Turkey, as well as pop, rock, jazz and classical, into an intriguing mix.
Rahman’s popularity is evident in the three recent world tours, which took him to Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Kuwait, Dubai, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Bahamas and a handful of American cities.
At first, he was reluctant to perform on stage.
“I’m more of a studio person,” Rahman, 41, said. “But I’m getting used to the live performances. They’ve been good for me and put me in a different state of mind.”
It’s been a sweltering day in Chennai, India, and A.R. Rahman is settling in for a phone conversation just before heading into an evening of work at his home studio. Stuffed with the latest mixers, synthesizers and computers, it’s arguably Asia’s most sophisticated studio and a far cry from Rahman’s meager beginnings.
Raised in a lower middle-class family in Chennai, Rahman began playing in bands as a keyboardist when he was 11 in order to help support the family after his father’s death. It was a hand-to-mouth existence he’s never forgotten, but one that also guided a young boy into the future.
“I was very young when I realized music would be my profession,” Rahman said. “I’ve worked at it ever since.”
After receiving a degree in Western classical music from Oxford University, he worked for many years composing advertising jingles and music for popular Indian television features. Rahman’s big break came in 1992 when he teamed with Bollywood director Mani Ratnam on the hit film, “Roja.” Ratnam was looking for a new sound for the movie and he felt Rahman was the man for the job.
“Actually, I thought it would be my first and last movie,” Rahman said, laughing. “But the overwhelming response drew me back into it.”
India’s film industry, centered in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), is the most prolific in the world, with around 1,000 movies a year aimed at a global audience of 3.6 billion. The movies, with running times averaging around three hours, are stuffed with musical numbers that often break out at the oddest moments.
And just how important is Rahman to the look and feel of a Bollywood film? One glance at his entry on the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) offers a clue. His name is attached to more than 12 current films, either completed, in post-production or filming.
Rahman also made an expected transition to Hollywood in 1998 with Shekhar Kapur’s “Elizabeth,” starring Cate Blanchett. More recent films include Andrew Niccol’s “Lord of War” and Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.”
‘Bombay Dreams’
When Andrew Lloyd Webber heard Rahman’s work in 1999, he said it was the most beautiful music he had ever heard. He asked the composer to collaborate on the musical “Bombay Dreams,” which opened in London’s West End in June 2002 and sold more than 1.5 million tickets. Later, a Broadway run was less successful.
Musical theater was a completely new experience for Rahman. At first, he wasn’t sure how to attack it but he knew with an old hand like Webber behind the project everything would work out.
“It was an unpredictable project,” Rahman recalled. “We weren’t exactly sure what it would be. Should it be English or Hindi? How would it sound? The challenge was to find a balance between my Indian music and the Western musical.”
The $7 million production had a pedestrian story line — a poor young man of the slums dreams of being a Bollywood movie star but must fight the Mafia to achieve his goal. Yet, thanks to the music, it proved to be a lively tribute to the Bollywood phenomenon. And the music, well, that was the best part. Rahman managed to create a new vocabulary in musical theater that contained the sly nuances and crisp rhythms of Indian music.
“Musicals had become predictable,” Rahman said. “I think Andrew saw a Bollywood musical as something very new for a Western audience.”
Rahman’s most recent work on John Nathan’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was another story. Director Matthew Warchus and musical supervisor Christopher Nightingale wanted to break from the typical musical style with an ethereal, world-music score written by Rahman and the Finnish group Varttina.
Throughout his career, the classically trained Rahman has absorbed the music of different cultures to create songs that are not easily forgotten. The story in “Bombay Dreams” was woven around songs that almost wrote themselves. But the challenge of “The Lord of the Rings” was much different.
“We knew the value of the books,” Rahman said. “The goal was to do something different but at the same time something that would appeal to an audience of Tolkien fans. It was a great task that took almost 2 1/2 years to complete.”
After so many years, does Rahman have a recipe for a song that works?
“A successful song relies on a memorable melody and good lyrics that have a special feel,” Rahman said, pausing. “And sometimes it’s just how you work with the director and the whole team that is part of the inspiration behind its success.”
