The interview which appears below, was originally published on MCPS Alliance in November 2008. ©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, the stage and screen composer, is one of the top selling artists in the world today. He talks to Paul Sexton about his career, his inspiration and why he’s not averse to a bit of Deep Purple.
Many of the London neighbours of A.R.Rahman probably have no idea there’s an artist in their midst whose sales worldwide are estimated at an astonishing 100 million albums. But even those with no particular affinity with Indian music, or the 50-plus films in which Rahman’s work has featured, may have enjoyed his compositions at the Theatre Royal in London’s Drury Lane. Rahman is the composer who, along with Finnish folk act Värttinä, has brought Middle Earth to musical life, writing the score of the West End smash The Lord of the Rings.
Rahman, who has lived in London for a decade and has just joined PRS from Indian society IPRS, already has 15 years of film soundtracks to his name, not to mention his music for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 2002 stage blockbuster Bombay Dreams. As I chat to the Tamil composer, who plays keyboards, guitar, harmonium and percussion and also sings, he starts to list his current projects, but loses me after the first half dozen.
But in November, we’ll hear Rahman on the big screen again as the co-composer, with Scotland’s Craig Armstrong (Romeo and Juliet, Moulin Rouge), of the biggest release of the year, The Golden Age. Directed by his fellow Indian Shekhar Kapur, who made the 1998 movie Elizabeth, it’s the story of the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I (played by Cate Blanchett) and Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen).
Rahman’s work on the silver screen has led to frequent international touring in which he plays his film hits to huge live audiences. Earlier this year he played one of his regular US tours, accompanied by a touring troupe that he says has slimmed down a little — it used to comprise 130 people on stage, now he travels with a mere 70.
‘Most of the numbers are hits from my films, and people have grown up with those songs, a whole generation,’ he says. ‘So for them it’s nostalgic.’
Last year, Rahman and orchestra played the Hollywood Bowl. ‘That was one of the most exciting things for us,’ he smiles. ‘There it was, an almost 80 per cent white American audience, and the response was amazing. At the end they were all dancing. That can open up your mind.
‘My American audience is mostly Asian, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi; people who grew up in the US. We get this particular group from Japan as well. 12 people who come everywhere, and they have T-shirts saying: “Rahman come to Japan.” We’re looking at it.’
His voyage to such prominence may look like a cruise, but it came through choppy waters, and Rahman himself initially thought his soundtrack career was over almost before it had begun. He had studied at Trinity College, Oxford, graduating with a degree in Western classical music. When he returned home, his first steps in soundtracking were uncertain, but they produced incredible results.
‘The first film I ever did, I got paid £250 for working for six months,’ he says of the 1992 Tamil language release Roja. ‘It was 25,000 rupees. The producer said “This is the amount I give every composer when they start.” I didn’t have enough money for petrol for my car. I survived by doing commercials, and playing as a session musician.
‘The first soundtrack was a very strange mindset, I thought it was going to be my last film. I felt completely drained, I said: “I can’t write another note of music”. But it became a huge hit and crossed over to the north, then people keep calling you to write more. I couldn’t think, then slowly things started coming, and I started working with different people.’
That first score was recognised at the country’s National Film Awards, where he became the first composer to win with a debut soundtrack. Rahman has won the award three times since. Last year, Roja was selected by Time magazine’s Richard Corliss as one of the five best soundtracks in cinema history. ‘This astonishing debut work parades Rahman’s gift for alchemising outside influences until they are totally Tamil, totally Rahman,’ he wrote. ‘He plays with reggae and jungle rhythms, fiddles with Broadway-style orchestrations, runs cool variations on Morricone’s scores for Italian westerns.’
‘I hate the name Bollywood but it’s easy’
– A.R. Rahman
Follow that – and A.R. did. After some more hit scores for Tamil films, he worked on his first Hindi language film, Rangeela, in 1995, and a raft of chart-topping soundtracks followed. Among those, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India was nominated for best foreign language film at the 2002 Academy Awards.
Looking back, Rahman is grateful for the introduction to a world that seemed far away as a young man growing up in southern India in the 1970s. He was born A.S.Dileep Kumar in Chennai, still better known to westerners as Madras, and has his mother to thank for the encouragement to chase music as a career.
‘I used to be a roadie, setting up equipment and doing my schooling at the same time,’ he says. ‘I was mostly interested in electronics at that time, how to make equalisers and amplifiers and stuff. Then my mum suddenly felt I was in the wrong thing, and one fine day she said: “You have to choose now.”
‘So I wouldn’t say reluctantly, but with a neutral kind of mind, I started playing for other people, then doing commercials, jingles and stuff. That’s when I got interested and became very passionate about music. Most of the commercials became popular, and I got my first film assignment.’
In those early days, Rahman was fighting the instinct that he needed to study to get a job. ‘But once you start enjoying music, you don’t care about all that,’ he says. ‘The love you get from people when you make music, a politician doesn’t get. Whatever you can do, it’s a gift.’
‘I worked on my first film for six months and was paid £250’
– A.R. Rahman
Rahman’s early influences were not local ones. ‘I think it was rock, strangely. Deep Purple, Smoke On The Water, and Pink Floyd. I used to take notes on all the keyboard parts. Then jazz. It’s been like a full journey from rock to jazz to Indian classical and Western classical.’
He also cites the inspiration of the 1969 pop-classical album Switched On Bach by Walter (later Wendy) Carlos, which won a Classical Grammy ‘Then the usual stuff, Mozart and Beethoven, and lately I was introduced to Verdi and Bartok. Among film composers I would say Ennio Morricone and John Williams, and Vangelis was a great influence on me. And Gershwin, and Craig Armstrong’s stuff also. The list goes on.’
As a film composer, Rahman is adept at using his imagination to bring pictures to life: ‘Usually there’s no visuals at first, just a brief. Sometimes I sneak in and go to the editing room.’ He says he always prefers to get some music into the project before the cut if possible. ‘You’re part of the film, and you could make or break it.’
The switch from screen to stage for The Lord of the Rings, and before that Bombay Dreams, has taught him some key differences between the two writing disciplines: ‘The normal brief when you write a film score is: “Simple, catchy, memorable.” A stage score is more complex, I would say, but at the same time more uplifting.
‘In film, your imagination is unlimited. Doing music for the stage has to be so precise. It has to work with the audience and there’s no second go.’
The popularity of The Lord of the Rings shows no signs of abating, as the London production books ahead to March 2008. But there’s much more music on the way from Rahman. ‘In India, the huge film project is Jodhaa Akbar, by Ashutosh Gowariker, the guy who directed Lagaan,’ he says. That movie opens in India in October, while other current work includes Sivaji, which premiered there in June, and the musical comedy-drama Lajjo, coming next year.
Not content with all that or with completing his home studio, Rahman is also busy developing his own label, KM Music, on which he plans to record under his own name and license his work to majors. He’s also much involved with his A.R.Rahman Foundation, which fights poverty by helping to establish educational institutions across India.
He’s not militant about it, but Rahman does see the term Bollywood as a Western generalisation. ‘I hate the name, but it’s easy,’ he admits. ‘The trouble with ‘Bollywood’ is that that’s only the Hindi film industry. We have six major languages.’
But has the wider global recognition led to greater creativity in the genre? ‘Things have changed, and people have changed, they reject anything cliched now,’ says the composer. ‘They see so much now, it has to be really original.’
So does the pre-eminent Indian soundtrack composer of his day think that the film industry there is genuinely bigger now — or is it just that the Western media is reporting and recognising it more? ‘Both ways,’ laughs Rahman. ‘Because you guys are saying it, it’s also growing.’
