Thanks for this Pavan! It was an excellent read!!
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 8:12 AM, $ Pavan Kumar $ <pawancum...@yahoo.com>wrote: > > > > http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090814/REVIEW/708139983/1007 > > > God of score > > > - Last Updated: August 13. 2009 12:36PM UAE / August 13. 2009 8:36AM > GMT > > Jai ho! Rahman holds his Slumdog Millionare Oscars (Best Score and Best > Original Song) at a post-award party in Los Angeles this February. Mario > Anzuoni / Reuters > > *In less than 20 years, AR Rahman has come to dominate Indian popular > music by breaking all of its borders.* *S Subramanian** reads a new > biography of Bollywood’s great assimilator.* > > *AR Rahman: The Musical Storm * > Kamini Mathai > Penguin India > Dh38 > > The Indian composer AR Rahman, recent winner of a pair of Academy Awards > for his jaunty songs in Slumdog Millionaire, has over the years demonstrated > a keen talent for reaching new, rapidly appreciative audiences. This talent > is typically discussed in reference to his work outside India, which began > early this century when he collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the > saccharine West End confection Bombay Dreams, pairing reworked versions of > some of his most outstanding songs from the 1990s with some of his worst > original music. Since then, his work has featured on Broadway and in Chinese > and Hollywood films. All this, particularly the Slumdog Oscars, has made > Rahman the first Indian composer to find substantial audiences beyond the > already large world of his country’s film industry. > > But Rahman’s first, more impressive feat of border-crossing occurred much > earlier, when he became the first Indian composer with a pan-Indian > audience. So often is Bollywood used as a symbol of the entire Indian film > industry that it is easy to overlook the country’s diversity of other > regional cinema. Outside Mumbai, other sizeable film industries operate like > self-contained planets, producing movies in the languages of Tamil, Telugu, > Kannada, Malayalam and Bengali. The borders between the four south Indian > cinemas are, for actors, directors and composers, particularly fluid; the > border between south Indian cinema and Hindi cinema has, because of deeper > linguistic differences, traditionally been far less permeable. > > Even music, that much-vaunted universal language, sat for long in decidedly > regional compartments. The music of the Bollywood and Tamil film industries > may have shared roots in the Indian seven-note scale, for instance, but they > long ago developed into entirely different sensibilities. In their default > modes, they leaned in different directions: Bollywood toward plaintive > romantic or existential ballads; Tamil music toward raga-based classical or > rhythm-heavy indigenous folk. They used different instruments: the harmonium > would have sounded as odd in Tamil music as the veena in Bollywood. The gulf > separating these genres was a wide one, spanned only by the occasional work > of the occasional composer. Perhaps work on the bridge that now connects > them had tentatively begun in the years before Rahman, but only after he > brought power cranes to the job, completed its construction, and made a few > sorties back and forth did other composers feel consistently comfortable > doing the same. > > Rahman’s debut soundtrack, Roja, released in 1992, provides a classic > example of how his music functions. A song will start simply, with a spare > melody and vocals with power but no apparent ambition to blow the listener > away. Within seconds, that all changes. The melody might enter a dense burst > of orchestration, or yield to a solo by an unexpected instrument, or somehow > reveal itself to be based on a highly classical raga. The vocals might shift > colour, from modest to epic, or from normal singing to Rahman’s own > free-spirited yodels, or from pristine enunciation to humming. The rhythm > can come out of wood blocks, or steel drums, or something that sounds > distinctly like a brass pot being hit with a bunched fist. Mixed together, > this reminds you of reggae one minute, Tamil folk the next, then > electronica, then south Indian classical – all together in one alluring > whole. > > Nearly 20 years after that debut, Rahman’s music still sparks interesting > (albeit well-worn) debates among music-lovers. What exactly is Rahman’s > genius? Does it lie in his arrangements, his meticulous layering of sounds > and voices as if they were sheets of phyllo? Or in his generous > accommodation of styles, or in his industrious production of catchy hooks? > In other words: is he “simply” a technically savvy producer of commercial > music? Or do arrangement, stylistic flexibility and hook-production fall > legitimately under the rubric of musical artistry, and is Rahman exactly > what his legions of devoted fans say he is: a straight-up compositional > genius? > > Kamini Mathai’s AR Rahman: The Musical Storm refuses to engage Rahman’s > influence or the music that underpins it, which makes this first attempt at > a biography of the composer a tepid one. This is partly the subject’s own > fault. For no discernible reason, Rahman is famously inaccessible; when he > is finally pinned down to an appointment, he is roughly as forthcoming about > his life and work as a captured spy under interrogation. (There are rules > for contacting Rahman, as Mathai, a Chennai-based journalist, quickly > discovered: “Do not call him, let him call you. Only SMS or mail, don’t > call. So mail and SMS I did. Over and over again.” Nine months later, Rahman > called her – for a five-second conversation.) This cult of deep secrecy > infects everybody around Rahman, as often happens with men who are the > absolute fulcrum of their industry: the creator, preserver and destroyer of > employment. Many of Mathai’s sources, anonymous and otherwise, are thus > short on details and opinions. > > This is, it should be pointed out, of a piece with nearly all biographical > projects in India. A majority of the illuminating biographies being written > here are of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru – both long removed from > this world, their archives and letters bared for an unusual level of > inspection and criticism. For most other lives in the public sphere, there > are only hagiographies. Authorised biographies are practically dictated by > their subjects; unauthorised biographies are platitudinous, scurrilous, or > (as in this case) simply boring. “We don’t preserve our historical records > (the reason why so many histories are littered with errors), we don’t want > to reveal failure, want to avoid controversy,” the historian Ramachandra > Guha once said about the yawning lack of good biographies in India. To this > could be added a reluctance to understand how a personal portrait, warts and > all, can lend context to one’s work. It is not so much that few Indian > authors are adept at biography; rather, few Indian subjects are adept at > being biographed. > > But with The Musical Storm, Mathai is hardly blameless, especially since > the first significant chapter of the book, on Rahman’s boyhood, is so > promising and generous with detail. Rahman was born Dileep Kumar in 1967, > the second of four children and the only son of Kasturi and RK Sekhar. > Sekhar, a workaholic musician, dominated the studio recordings of the south > Indian film industry, serving as the music director’s assistant (arranging > and conducting rehearsals, notating music, hiring instrumentalists) on > multiple films at the same time. “He never refused work,” Mathai writes. “He > would work himself from 7am to midnight, seven days a week, sometimes > sleeping just two hours a day. He knew more hours of work meant more money.” > Dileep was nine years old when his father died of a stomach cancer that had > been ignored for many months – to this day, the family, Rahman included, > suspects black magic. > > Like a pellet of potent dye, his father’s demise would colour everything > that followed in Dileep’s life. Dileep found his calling in his father’s > field, mastering Sekhar’s favourite instrument, the keyboard. The family > switched faiths (and therefore names) in the late 1980s, because his mother > had found spiritual consolation with a Sufi healer when she was combing the > city for Sekhar’s cure. When Dileep first paddled into composing, creating > advertising jingles, he made sure to bring with him his father’s acute > business sense. (Roja was composed almost against his better judgement: > “With every jingle I was making Rs15,000, so 25,000 for an entire movie was > monetarily not worth it,” Rahman says. “But I knew it was not the same... I > knew this was worth the sacrifice.”) From the start, he decided to credit > everyone who worked for him – his instrumentalists, his backup singers, his > sound engineers – a practice without precedent in Indian film music. > “Perhaps,” Matthai conjectures, “this was because Rahman felt his father > never got his due and neither did he, when he was playing for and > ghost-composing for directors.” > > Roja was released in 1992; by 1995, Rahman was a star, and by 2000, he was > a phenomenon. (It is worth remembering, that in India, popular music is > actually film music.) He worked with the leading film directors in India, > all of whom were willing to troop down to Chennai, wait patiently for him in > his studio’s anterooms, and pay him enormous amounts for the privilege. > Rahman put out three or four ridiculously successful albums a year, each > selling hundreds of thousands of copies, each producing at least two > genre-defying songs that fattened the airwaves for weeks on end. In 2000 > alone, Rahman’s music accompanied six films, three of which – Alai Payuthey, > Kandukondain Kandukondain and Rhythm, all Tamil – count not only among his > best work ever, but also among his most popular. Just recently, a Bengali > friend told me that she can still sing the classically-inflected title song > of Alai Payuthey despite not knowing the meaning of a single world of the > lyrics. It is the sort of anecdote that is exchanged often in discussions > about Rahman. > > Mathai trudges this spectacular arc with slender imagination; at some > point, The Musical Storm becomes just a plodding series of quotes, in either > indirect or guarded direct speech. (Over three whole pages, for instance, we > are force-fed minor variations of the same platitude: “For Rahman there is > nothing but God and music,” as one director puts it.) There is no > observation or native analysis – no attempt, as the prolific biographer > David McCullough once suggested, to just “look at your fish”, to absorb and > internalise and then make conclusions. Worse still, for a composer’s > biography, there is far too little about Rahman’s music or its context. > > One glaring example of this deficiency is Mathai’s failure to distinguish > Rahman’s music from that of Ilayaraja, the regnant south Indian composer of > the 1980s. Working across the four south Indian States, Ilayaraja > established a definitive sound over literally hundreds of films, a sound > that every film director wanted and that every south Indian music director > aimed to replicate. Its techniques relied upon the Western orchestral model, > but its soul was deeply south Indian, oscillating between the region’s folk > and classical identities – which is why many Tamil cinema purists still > plump for Ilayaraja, but also why his forays into Bollywood were so > circumscribed. > > It was Ilayaraja’s mould – lush, orchestral, created in performance – that > Rahman broke with his electronic sounds, relative minimalism, emphasised > solos and computer-aided assemblies. After Roja, Rahman’s sound caught on so > fast, and so powerfully, that Ilayaraja lost his dominance over big-banner > films within a couple of years and never regained it. Rahman, meanwhile, > moved from strength to assimilative strength. When he began scoring for > Hindi films, he learnt to set Sufi poetry to music, as in Chaiya Chaiya, a > song of unalloyed yearning from the movie Dil Se. When his horizons > broadened beyond India, he began to experiment with rap, hip-hop and techno; > Fanaa, a 2003 song set in a nightclub, was a capsule of electronic dance > punctuated by sudden knots of Indian classical progressions. Again and > again, Rahman gets inside a style of music, examines its machinery, then > brings away the important cogs and wheels to use in his own compositions. > > Rahman is 42 now, and he has years of composing still to come. Immediately > after Slumdog Millionare, rumours swirled that he had been swamped with more > Hollywood offers; others ?�çF > -- Cheers, Madhavan.R Be a Music Fan; not a Music Pirate!
