*You sang Pray for me brother for the first time at your New Year's Eve
concert in Mumbai*
*Correction*: It was infact sung a long time during the Bangalore concert.
Gomzy
On 1/8/07, Gopal Srinivasan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
'Guru is about rediscovering life'
Screen On & Off
A.R. RAHMAN tells Pratim D. Gupta why the sky is the limit with Mani
Ratnam, why he picked Luka
chhupi, Chhan chhan and Khalbali for the Oscars, his UN song, making music
with Nelly Furtado
and more
Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai in Guru
What is it about Mani Ratnam that makes you reserve your best for him?
I think it's the vibe. The vibe is very important when two creative people
work together. It is
not about egos. It is about working towards the same goal, reaching the
same result. Then
again, I don't reserve anything special for him (laughs). It so happens.
It's how you get
inspired by each other.
What is the process? How do the two of you approach a film score?
It's just that once the film is decided he gives opportunities to come up
with ideas. Not just
me, whether it's the cameraman, the actors, everyone. He pushes the ball
in your court and then
you go about working on it. Then he comes back when things need to be
tweaked around, to be
made better.
This is very unlike certain other directors, who would say: "I want this
and I don't want
anything else". There you already have the boundaries. Here, with Mani,
the sky is the limit.
You can think about weird things also and he always wants to do work which
is groundbreaking.
It's not that you have to work hard or anything. It just comes naturally
with him.
Yuva, your last work with him, had a very Bengali setting. What about
Guru?
It's actually more Gujarati. It's more close to Mumbai than anything else.
We wanted to do one
song like Govinda ala re kind of thing but that didn't fit into the
script. So we used that
sound and feel in the first song which is Barso re megha megha. That's
where all the big drums
came in from. So, it was done for a different song but it fitted into
that. It's all Gujarat.
So there was no problem.
Mayya mayya is on the lines of Hamma hamma and Chaiyya chaiyya. When you
create an item number
like that do you keep the popularity aspect in mind?
In the sub-conscious mind you would want the song to become popular.
That's the whole reason of
doing a number like that. People should sing and enjoy. So we put in all
into that. For Mayya
mayya, I took the hook from a man who was shouting "mayya mayya" on the
road when I was on the
road to Haj. The word "mayya" means water in Arabic and he was selling
water. Then later in
Mayya mayya we have even added some Gujarati lines because of the
characters present in the
picturisation.
Tere bina is your tribute to the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan…
Yes, when I was doing the soundtrack of Guru, I was listening to
Nusratsaab's Sajna tere bina.
And I thought there was no such song which had come into Hindi films. You
know in terms of the
feel. So I thought it would be great to use a song like that in this film.
And I even used the
same kind of lyrics, Tere bina… and it fell into the whole groove in a
very different way for
the film. But I would say the inspiration was definitely Nusratsaab's
music and his style of
singing.
You didn't know a word of Hindi when you started out. These days, you seem
to contribute to the
lyrics…
(Laughs) It's good to work with people who are filled vessels like
Gulzarsaab. They are so calm
and yet the little, little things they do are fantastic. Tere bina is so
simple the way he's
written it. Yet it complements the whole setting so beautifully. And he
never tries to do
something which is great and show the world what he can write. It's all
from the heart.
Why get someone like Bappi Lahiri to sing the Guru title track?
I was at an award function in 2005 and I heard him sing on stage and I
found his vocals to be
very dynamic. We intended Abhishek (Bachchan) to sing that song in the
film but then he was
busy. And I had to go abroad when he was free. So Gulzarsaab and I were
talking who we can try
out and he said why don't you use Bappi for the song. It was a great idea
actually. He just
came from Calcutta and sang the song in two hours flat.
How would you compare the soundtrack of Guru to your last work with Mani
Ratnam, Yuva?
The music of Guru is about rediscovering life. Yuva was actually more like
item numbers, like
fillers rather than actually parts of a film. But here it is all bound
together, in the way
Jaage hai becomes the backbone of the film. Yuva started apologetically —
ok, we will also have
songs. But then here Mani said from the start: "Let's have songs in the
story." This is more
like him.
Coming to the song you have done for the United Nations, was Pray for me
brother your idea?
I made the song first because I have been feeling very strongly about this
for quite some time.
You know India is really coming up as a country but at the same time you
are having these
suicides by farmers and there is so much of poverty all around. That
inspired me to make this
song. Blaaze and I have sung it. Then the United Millennium Development
Cause came in. They
have this project of eradicating poverty from this world by 2015 and so
they thought of using
the Pray for me brother song like an anthem for that.
Then, Universal Music and Nokia followed…
Yes, Universal Music is coming out with the song. We wanted to make a
video for Pray for me
brother and when I told some of my friends in London, they introduced me
to Nokia. It is the
first ever video in the mobile cinemascope format. Here the frame becomes
vertical as opposed
to the horizontal film frame format. My friend Bala (of Bharatbala
productions) has made the
video. He's used a lot of skyscrapers to show the extremities with the
poor.
You sang Pray for me brother for the first time at your New Year's Eve
concert in Mumbai. What
was the response there?
The response was very good. Before I performed the song, we played a
little audio-visual where
we showed how billions are used for wars while just a fraction is required
to feed people.
Everyone was clapping after the song and in such a hyper mood like you
have on New Year's Eve,
it was good.
Besides that song, how did the concert go?
I wanted to do this concert because it was a great outlet for Pray for me.
The other good thing
that happened was Nelly Furtado. We were supposed to work together before
but it didn't work
out. Now I hear she's told the press that she wants to work with me. We
have to do a project,
which is good for me, good for her.
Just a few days to go for the Oscar nomination list... What is your gut
feeling?
Well, I am ready to be surprised, in a pleasant way (laughs). I have heard
that there have been
articles about my three songs in magazines there, like Variety. Rang De
Basanti is, of course,
there but Water is a very important film because it did very well at the
North American
box-office. So, let's see…
Why did you choose to send these three particular songs, Chhan chhan
(Water), Luka chhupi (Rang
De Basanti) and Khalbali (Rang De Basanti)?
Chhan chhan is very important in the film as it shows the exuberance of
characters who are
facing a crisis. For the Rang De songs it was very important that I chose
songs which have been
performed by me. Luka chhupi is special not only because Lataji has sung
it but it also proves
to be a counterpoint in the film.
What else are you working on as of now?
It's all work in progress. So, it's premature to talk about them. But you
will soon get to hear
about Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur's sequel to Elizabeth and Ashutosh
Gowariker's Jodha Akbar.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070108/asp/calcutta/story_7233255.asp
--
Regards
Gomtesh V Upadhye
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Cell : +91 988 675 3639
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