AR Rahman at 51: The maestro who creates everlasting music

On New Year’s eve, at six in the morning, I was at a police station in Mumbai.

I was purposely there to attend a classical music rendition at the station’s ‘mini-forest’. This forest was once a dumping yard, and through the efforts of a nature loving couple (Afzal and Nusrat Khatri), it has been converted into a splendid place for nature and culture.

After the soothing performance, I overheard a gentleman joking that the classical music didn’t put him to sleep.

No, not because he doesn’t like classical. The reason has to do with his addiction to – beats. Everywhere – on the radio in his car, on television and in parties – he is exposed to rhythmic Bollywood-ish music. He tries finding beats in every song and feels “odd” if they are missing – like in the classical performance of that morning that had alaaps and long phrases without rhythm.

Like a million others, he is a huge fan of AR Rahman, and admittedly in love with him. He loves how ‘Rahman’s beats’ make him ‘move’ and he is also fond of the tunes.

This experience of Rahman’s beat and rhythm is also shared by longtime music professionals.

For instance, Amit Roy joined the prestigious All India Radio (AIR) in 1991 as a guitarist. And the following year, in 1992, he was exposed to Rahman’s very popular music from the film Roja.

“Nobody creates rhythmic patterns like Rehman, and nobody comes close to him in this art”.

It’s easy to see what Amit is talking about. Listen again to the song Roja Janeman – from Rahman’s first film Roja. As a Rahman fan one will recall Sujatha Mohan’s soaring voice at the start that has become iconic. This pleasant introduction is followed immediately by the ‘rhythm’, which stays throughout the mellifluous first stanza of the song. Rahman’s admirers will recall not just the words and the music, but also this rhythm. The younger fans may not choose Roja, but they will use films like Ghajini and Slumdog Millionaire as reference.

Amit, whose work involves regular recordings for bhajans, thumris, ghazals and other non-Bollywood genres of music, finds great merit in the song Jai Ho from British superhit movie Slumdog Millionaire. In his longstanding service at the All India Radio, he hasn’t found the same sense of melody and rhythm in any other Bollywood music director.

AR Rahman’s Oscar winning score from the movie Slumdog Millionaire:

Sandesh Shandilya, himself a music director (Jab We Met, Chameli), is an ardent admirer of ‘Rahman saab’. He is convinced that we live in the ‘Rahman era’ of music, and is particularly fond of the music-maker’s unpredictability. “I like the element of surprise present in every song. One cannot determine what turn the notes will take.”

However, there are other musicians – some of whom regularly record for film songs – who appreciate Rahman’s melodies, but are unhappy with the music culture he has heralded. Their complaint is common – it is all about the rhythm, not the melody.

One of them, a senior artist, says that while Rahman’s Roja and other early films offered a mix of rhythm and melody, the newer ones have loud thumping sounds in the background that eat into the songs’ soul – the instrumental phrases.

He is referring to the fact that most listeners today don’t remember instrumental phrases of songs – they just hum the song’s tune to a beat. The song may be melodious, but they are likely to remember the tune and the words and not, say, the flute and sitar pieces.

To elucidate this point, I have referenced a song by Rahman’s guru Illayaraja – he is one of the most admired names in music in the country, and respected by Rahman himself. His composition, ‘Pon Malai Poluthu’ (Tamil, 1980), was loved by the listeners after its release. They remembered and hummed not just the tune but also the flute pieces and the string section interludes. In fact, these musical pieces are very prominent in the song and difficult to sing.

The musicians I conversed with rue the idea that the attention on rhythm and beat alone has eroded the culture of enjoying such instrumental nuances. Even where they exist, the listeners don’t have the patience of absorbing them.

However, music director Sandesh calls this attention as simply a phase. “What’s more important is the fact that every composer after Rehman seems to have been inspired by him. I find a meditative quality in his music”.

As does a junior officer I met on that New Year’s eve morning at the police station. A fan of Rahman, he was gladly appreciating the slowness of the classical rendition. The rest of his day would involve fighting with traffic offenders and drunkards, and listening constantly to car honking and Metro construction noise.

For him, the classical melody of that morning was soulful and a distraction from the usual noise.

Which is why even on Rahman, he prefers the slower Jashn-e-Bahara (film: Jodha Akbar) to any of the pacy numbers like Jai Ho!

(The author is a Mumbai-based author and art critic).