The interview which appears below was originally published in Nasreen Munni Kabir's book, A.R. Rahman: The Spirit of Music. ©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.
NMK: When did you first decide to become a musician?
A.R.R.: I didn’t decide, in a way, I was forced to. Since my father was the only breadwinner in the family, we were faced with a lot of money problems after he died. We had to find a way of surviving. For the first two years, my mother managed to run the house by hiring out the musical equipment that we owned — keyboards and combo organs. They were very popular in the 1960s and ’70s.
In 1978, when I was eleven, I started working as a roadie, setting up our keyboards for other musicians. I was studying at the Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan, but couldn’t go to school every day because I was the only one in the family who brought home any money. My sisters were still very young. I developed a kind of complex about being absent so often from school. At one point, I had to take a year off from studying, but when it came to the board exams, I still managed to get sixty-two percent. [smiles]
NMK: Did you study music while you were working as a roadie?
A.R.R.: Despite all the problems, my mother made sure I did. Her name was “Kasturi,” but she later took the name “Kareema Begum.” She has always been a pillar of strength and never let us children ever feel the absence of our father.
Things were changing. A year or so later, the musicians who couldn’t at first afford to own keyboards started to buy their own gear. So people stopped hiring our equipment. That’s when my mother said: “Why don’t you learn to play the keyboards?”
So I started working as a keyboard player. I was about twelve. A friend of my father’s, the Malayalam composer M.K. Arjunan, who is fondly called Arjunan Master, gave me my first job and a token salary of fifty rupees. I had to operate a record player for a film.
For almost ten years, from 1979, I worked as a session musician with almost every music director in the South. I played the keyboards in the film orchestras of many famous and popular composers, including Mr. Ilayaraja, Raj-Koti, and the Kannada composer Vijaya Anand.
NMK: Did you go to school at the same time?
A.R.R.: Yes, but my timings were so crazy that I was forced to change schools because I couldn’t make it to class. In 1983, I left my first school and enrolled in the Madras Christian College. I studied there for just under a year. Then the Telugu composer Ramesh Naidu offered me a year’s work as a keyboard player, and I decided to stop studying altogether. I must have been about sixteen.
The really busy work period started from about 1988. I was working double shifts, playing the keyboards for film music and jingles. I was working with Raj-Koti from 9 in the morning to 9 at night, then I would take my car, load all my equipment, and drive to another studio called Picture Productions where it would be jingles. I would finish at 4 the next morning, come home, sleep for four hours and return to the studio. I ate between shifts. That’s it. [laughs]
NMK: Were you well paid?
A.R.R.: Yes, because I was also a music programmer, which meant I earned a lot of money. I started at 200 rupees a shift, and ended up getting 15,000 a shift. It was hard work but the money helped to support the family, and allowed me to buy more gear.
NMK: Do you regret missing out on a carefree childhood?
A.R.R.: I did miss out on many things, but I don’t regret it. I didn’t have time for sports or holidays, or the kind of things people spend their money on. We didn’t miss those things because we didn’t know they existed anyway. But I did feel insecure about leaving school at sixteen. That’s young. If you aren’t formally educated, no one will let their daughter marry you. [smiles]
NMK: Do you visit your old house on Habibullah Road?
A.R.R.: Yes, I went back there recently. It felt exactly like Cinema Paradiso. I had the soundtrack of that film in my head as I drove through the lanes of Thyagaraya Nagar — it was home for the first twenty years of my life. Everything has changed. All the hutments are concrete houses now.
I went there because I had wanted to visit a friend. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that he had passed away the year before. I met his mother and she asked me: “What are your kids doing?” “They’re learning music.” “They should become doctors.” “No. My kids want to learn music.” “Well, why not? You’ve won many awards, right?” [both laugh]
Musicians in India still don’t seem to have enough social status. At least that’s how the older generation sees things. They don’t seem to recognize musicians as belonging to a full-time profession. But it’s cool to be a musician, if you’re famous. [smiles]
NMK: Was working as a session musician any fun?
A.R.R.: It wasn’t exciting because the music was quite traditional. I wanted to be a computer engineer when I was a kid. Electronic gadgets and technology fascinated me. When I managed to save money, I bought some modern kit, then I had fun playing music.
