The article which appears below, was originally published on Music From The Movies Website in March 2009. ©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.
Slumdog Millionaire is not just a film, it’s a phenomenon. Ever since its release almost four months ago, this movie has captured the hearts of millions and is still building a following to this very day. Even last weekend (Feb 13-15) Slumdog has managed to keep climbing the list of the top ten grossing films bringing its gross to $88.1 million in the U.S. and taking the International community by storm.
One week later it has climbed the top ten films to number five, a week later number three, it’s an infectious spiritual awakening. Its scoring roots are a godsend, an interesting tale of destiny that attracted Indian composer A.R. Rahman to a film that literally had a very small budget for music and a British director with a brilliant vision that crossed cultural boundaries.
Born in Madras, India, now know as Chennai, on January 6th 1966, A.R. Rahman is commonly referred to as The Mozart of Madras and is also known as the John Williams of India. Born into a musically affluent family he started learning to play the piano at four, and at the age of nine his father passed away. Since the pressure of supporting his family became his responsibility he joined Ilayaraja’s troupe as a keyboard player at the age of eleven, he had to drop out of school and travel the world with various orchestras as well as accompanying the great tabla player Zakir Hussain.
Even though A.R.s music always has a Southern Indian influence, he won a scholarship at the Trinity College of Music at Oxford University where he studied western classical music and obtained a degree in music. In 1987 he moved into the advertising world where he composed more than 300 jingles over five years. Since his very first film in 1992 Roja, Rahman has composed over one hundred projects including songs he wrote for Lord of War and Spike Lee’s Inside Man, as well as Elizabeth: The Golden Age with Craig Armstrong, Water with Mychael Danna, and the epic Japanese war film Warriors of Heaven and Earth.
Over the years he has won twenty four various awards for his work in films like Taal, The Legend of Bhagat Singh, Saathiya, Jodhaa Akbar, Roja, Minsaara Kanavu, Kannathil Muthamittal, Rangeela, Dil Se.., Swades: We, the People, Rang De Basanti, Guru, and Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, which was nominated for best foreign language film at the 2002 Academy Awards. At forty three years old, A.R. has revolutionized film music in India and his creative reach outside his country has only just begun.
The Sound of Slumdog
The unique sounds and melodies of Slumdog Millionaire display a hybrid between film and pop, vocal and instrumental, and one of the finest electronic scores that can be simply defined as a ‘culture shock.’ The instrumental side is definitely the antithesis of orchestral, with pounding drums, various percussive instruments, ethnic and traditional, singers that hum, articulate, sing, and even breathe, and above all that killer sampling and synthesizer playing.
After hearing a promotional CD of the score and the regular soundtrack release, it’s clear that the definition between song and score is definitely blurred. A grey musical area that has found its success by winning the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, a BAFTA for Best Music, and numerous Academy Awards including Best Original Score and Best Original Song for ‘Jai Ho’.
Just listen to ‘Mausam’ and ‘Escape’ from the soundtrack and you’ll hear how effective Rahman can be when scoring a film with his particular style of bombast. From that great acoustic guitar work to those throbbing melodic synthesizers combined with great traditional Indian instrumentation, the straight ahead drumming, and those strange background vocals, A.R. mesmerizes!
Director Danny Boyle’s film is all about karma, religion, a spiritual awakening leading us into all that humanity has to offer. It’s Boyle’s vision that inspired A.R. and is the result of a style, that grey area between song and score which he so desperately wanted. From the antitheses of the bigotry, violence, and the despair of the ghetto to embracing the faith, love, and the will to overcome all adversaries to live a dream, this is destiny in the making.
As Rahman points out, “I’m a deeply spiritual person. Sufism is about love, love for a fellow human, love for all around humanity, and ultimately love for God. For me, it’s where music and religion meet at dargahs, you will find qawwalis and that’s my inspiration.” It’s exactly this hope and truth that one can succeed against all odds, a musical interpretation of faith which gives us the belief that anything can come true if you really believe, and Rahman’s music definitely reflects that.
A Conversation with Rahman
On Monday December the 8th A.R. is located somewhere in London, its 6:45PM my time and 2:45AM British time. When you talk to Rahman he sounds like this overjoyed little boy. Someone who has worked hard for years and now values the moment of recognition, but it really doesn’t faze him. He’s done so much work in films over the years; the enlightenment of Slumdog is no surprise especially since its ‘the’ cultural crossover between Bollywood and Hollywood.
Slumdog Millionaire is a small film that came out of nowhere, a cultural experiment that mixes destiny, faith, and the sheer will to survive through hope, truth, and love. It defines the will to succeed through the magic in the music and a composer who has given his heart and soul to the industry it embodies. You could see it in his eyes as he sang both of his songs that were nominated for Oscars at the Academy Awards Ceremony, you could hear it in his voice when he accepted the award for Best Score and said, ‘God is Great.’
This is the story of a composer’s success and the most unlikely of films to be his answer and show him the way. It is written, that a man who can see beyond the materialistic world and envision a dream where music and religion meet at dargahs, that’s where he finds qawwalis. This is the inspiration to create and the will to overcome solely based on an idea and the faith of a director to succeed against all odds.
Q&A with A.R. Rahman
What is film music, what should it do for a film?
For me it has to make the film a part of people’s life. It should enhance the whole experience and also transport the viewer to a place that’s more comfortable and sometimes uncomfortable, it makes them edgy; some films actually need that, or vice versa. In Slumdog Millionaire the way that Danny uses film music, he uses songs more like a score except for the last song during the end titles. Instead of just having a score, he believes that each part in the film has its own identity and should have its own musical item, recorded as an item; it’s a day of recording different things.
Each cue which he asked me to do is one such item in my language. So that’s the way he mixed and enhanced the whole thing, to put it in your face. How I approach composing has to do with each film, sometimes it’s enhancing the drama, sometimes enhancing the emotion, sometimes even making a theme for each character, and sometimes it has all of those things, taking an interval and coming out of it. Some films have that quality, where your film is so serious that you stick it in and it will come back and go back with the film again.
It’s not one form at all; it really depends on each film. The emotion is definitely the key and sometimes it plays the role of subliminal sound, sometimes it’s just an ambient track. I really believe that film music should always play a role and I always get involved in a film which gives music an important role in it. A classic example is The Godfather, you have a person sitting there and the theme says it all, it has this huge epic feeling and underscores the whole empire of the characters, this all comes through the music beautifully.
You wrote every piece of music in this film, where do you draw the line in-between score or song or is it your theory for the style to move in and out of each concept creating a hybrid at certain times?
I watched the film, I loved the film. I wasn’t really supposed to score the whole movie because Danny just wanted a song from me. I explained to him that if you want me to score the movie I have to write the songs, the score, everything. That’s how the whole thing turned out. Then Danny said, ‘Ok’ and he started giving me cues to work with, so I started giving him cues back. It’s probably making sense of chaos and in some places it enhances the drama.
There’s one love theme of course which keeps coming in again and again, which is Latika’s Theme, so the character of that piece, it’s almost like her voice, her inner voice. That’s where the female comes into that. You’re right about it sometimes being a part of the score that almost becomes a song because of the vocals I use, like the piece ‘Liquid Dance’. When he escapes from his brothers house in the end, that one, even the first track when the cops are chasing the kids, but this hybrid especially happens in ‘Liquid Dance’.
Isn’t the key to a great score the trust the director has in you. Danny told me he had music for the end of the film, but you told him not to worry, you could easily come up with something better. That’s total trust.
(Laughter) It is. It’s so important because that moment when somebody actually trusts you, you work even harder, than just trying to come into the project, when you’re trying to satisfy yourself first, so you really want to do the best then. When somebody’s insecure and they don’t trust you then it’s a real confusing thing, it’s happened to me before.
After a point in time there’s no turning back, there’s an ice breaking kind of thing, ‘Oh it was thematic there, I don’t know what he likes.’ That went away because he was like a friend. When that went away I was also just giving whatever I could do, the best I could do because Danny became a friend. So there was no budget or nothing else to worry about, I just became interested in the music and didn’t care about anything else. That’s how it worked out.
You said, “I’m a deeply spiritual person. Sufism is about love – love for a fellow human, love for all around humanity, and ultimately love for God. For me, it’s where music and religion meet – at dargahs, you will find qawwalis. That’s my inspiration.” Where does music and religion meet in a film like Slumdog Millionare?
For me I think the film gives hope. Hope is nothing but a belief in the supernatural power. There’s something which is inside you, which says that people are very good and are honestly deserving. That’s a conscience, which is nothing but probably an affliction of divinity. It’s a good day because it’s great about the holy day, you’ve been charitable, you see the good inside you and if you do something bad it gives you guilt.
Its normal human beings on the rat, some of them are ratty, so those are the feelings I’m talking about. It’s not about direct me; convince me with a religion, it’s in a sense of a religion or a sense of processing or a sense of devotion. This film gives you the hope that one can succeed against all odds. Musically if you just look at the ‘Love Theme’, there is a kind of purity in it and you just have to close your eyes and look into it. You can see where you are transported somewhere. It’s in the element of stuff that is inherent. You can’t just find it, it’s an intimate feeling.
When you scored this film what was the initial idea from the film, script, or director that inspired you?
I was looking for a peculiar sound. I was looking for something that should be exciting and at the same time throbbing, heavy, with a surprising element. And then I forgot about it and then it all flew. When I started getting it, the music came to me naturally, and then for the rest of the tune you filter out things and take out the bad stuff, so that’s for anything.
The part that I started with was this ‘Gangsta Blues’ track, then the ‘Liquid Dance’ track, and the ‘Love Theme’ was composed almost at the end of the film. ‘Gangsta Blues’ is when the older Salim goes through the streets to find gangster Javed Bhai. He pays to get into his place where a group of gangsters are gambling and tells them, ‘I’m looking for the head gangster.’ They laugh at him and he says, ‘I’ll kill you all,’ then Javed appears and Salim says, ‘You’re the gangster?’ Javed responds, ‘I’m the boss, come here friend. I’ve been looking for someone like you.’ Then the scene darkens and the music ends.
There’s this really interesting sequence with the boys playing in the water, then all of a sudden out of nowhere we see a group of people with sticks and bats attacking the Muslims. Your score fits the part perfectly.
In factual reality that really happened. I don’t believe in this, when people treat each other like animals because it gets very sad in a way for me. I really didn’t want to compose something that would make it very sad in the film or happy or even angry, it was more like a trip actually, a transient trip with these animals. I thought it was a very new idea, there were all these people coming; it was like somebody was taking LSD. That was a new direction for me.
I’ve done a theme like this in 1995 for a film called Bombay, the same thing like both of the communities killing each other and that’s in the ‘Bombay Theme’ at some point. In Slumdog Salim and Jamal are playing in the water and their mother is with them, this gang of people yelling, ‘They are Muslims,’ are attacking everyone in this neighborhood by beating them and burning their houses down. They beat Jamal and Salim’s mother to death, it was completely tragic.
What about the part in the film when the kids are running from the police on their motorcycles?
That’s a part that’s got M.I.A (Maya Arulpragasam) in it, that’s a song that she recorded for that part. I worked on this with her, but the only thing that I didn’t compose for Slumdog was from part of an opera you see in the film called ‘Orphée et Eurydice’ composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck. There was also one other track by M.I.A. called ‘Paper Planes’.
Wasn’t the final sequence when Jamal sees Latika at the train station one of the most important musical parts?
The big scene actually is hard to define because we organized this in a way where every cue was vital and each one had its own particular place. The biggest cue was probably that final meeting of Jamal and Latika at the end of the film, where it’s looks like they may never meet again, but everything changes. This is the last cue which is basically ‘Latika’s Theme’ on the soundtrack.
After Jamal wins the twenty million rupees and we see those intercut shots of the crowds cheering, his brother shooting the gangster while he’s in the bathtub full of money and says, ‘God is great,’ there’s this quiet aftermath that shows a lonely shot of Jamal sitting next to a pole at the train station. After brief contemplation he sees Latika in a yellow scarf from a distance, this is when Latika’s Theme begins. Memories of the past come flashing back to Jamal as he embraces Latika, there’s a soft instrumental variation on the theme that ends the film after Jamal says. ‘This is our destiny,’ they kiss, there’s this bright light behind them, and we read on the bottom left of the screen, ‘D-It is written.’
Danny said there wasn’t a large budget for the score, so how did you manage to make this such a great score?
I wanted to work with Danny, I really didn’t care if there was any money in it or not. Sometimes it really has to do whether you like the director. It’s all about the movie, about the piece of art. To get into what I would normally charge and require, I wouldn’t have done the movie at all and I would’ve missed everything.
So sometimes I take risks and do certain things based on the feeling I have for the film and how much I really want to work with the director. This film didn’t require a big epic score; it required less than a symphony. I did whatever we could do when scoring this, explored all the possibilities and never made any compromises at all on the production.
One thing I love about your work is how you use the voice, how many vocalists did you use and what cues did they perform on?
These are all real voices or singers from India, one from Mumbai, one from Chennai, and other towns as well. Some of the words they sung were mine like in the first track with M.I.A. called ‘O…Saya’. I used Alka Yagnik and lla Arun on ‘Ringa Ringa’, Palakkad Sriram and Madhumitha on ‘Liquid Dance’, Suzanne on ‘Latika’s Theme’ and ‘Dreams on Fire’, Sono Nigam, Mahalaxmi lyer, and Alisha Chinai on ‘Aaj Ki Raat’, ‘Madhumitha’ again on ‘Millionaire’, and BlaaZe on ‘Gangsta Blues’.
Some of the other voices are singers I’ve worked with before in my studio. It was based on an interesting combination of men and women’s voices, but I used four women, Sukhvinder Singh, Tanvi Shah, Mahalaxmi lyer, and Vijay Prakash to sing the last track ‘Jai Ho’.
Do you write your scores out, orchestrate them, and conduct them, when you use an orchestra?
Sometimes I write my music out on a score sheet and most of the time when I think it’s a complicated cue it’s programmed and I play it in Logic. From there it’s transferred and my orchestrator takes it and transcribes it up for the orchestra. Sometimes you have a performance to do and I just turn on the microphone and play.
In India it’s a fairly common thing to do, you just play what you’re are really feeling or inspired by, then we chop this into all of these pieces and you can make a piece out of it. If someone is sitting in the booth with a flute, then you can really hum it to them because it’s easy for a musician to pick this up and play the same thing again and there’s usually a group of musicians performing it. I love playing music, but the process of making music can be boring.
Is Slumdog Millionaire the most mainstream film to ever emerge from India, perhaps being a hybrid between Hollywood and Bollywood?
Absolutely, the translation of ideas into the mainstream has crossed the broad cultural landscape between our countries and worlds. We are both huge countries, but we need to merge our art forms to create a third one. This will open up doors for both Bollywood and Hollywood and become global, opening up many doors for a lot of filmmakers.
How is working with a British director like Danny different than a director from India, do they approach their vision of the music differently?
What’s important is that each director should know his audience. That’s exactly the reason why I trust the director’s instinct a lot, it doesn’t matter whether the director is from India, South Indian or North Indian or anywhere for that matter, so Danny really knows his audience.
It didn’t really matter if I was a composer or a performer or both, Danny completely accepted me. So I ended up combining Danny’s instinct and my instinct together, that’s what made the collaboration successful and the music becomes one with the film.
What do you love about film music?
Making film music is a magical profession where sometimes you do something and you can make people happy. When the color of sound is released they feel good. That’s given back to you in a very nice way. Sometimes in a very coded way you send out a message which is beautiful that changes perception, that changes the way you speak or behave to another human being, so that’s very beautiful. It’s probably a modern day sign I’d say.
