The Maestro of Madras

I was a little under 10 years old when the film Roja released and the Indian film industry was introduced to the musical genius of A. R. Rahman. At that age, the only song that caught my attention of course was Rukumani which as it turns out is full of innuendos and probably not suitable for kids that age at all. Little did we know!

What is it about Rahman that, in my mind stood him out of the ordinary? My earliest memory of why I liked his music was the choice of instruments, the musical arrangement and the spatial sound - the feeling of sound moving from one area to another. Fine examples of this are the songs 'Kehna hi Kya' from the film Bombay, Behne De from Raavan and 'Ghanan Ghanan' from Lagaan. If you have a reasonably good music system (Stereo or headphones), the depth of Rahman's musical arrangements will just shine through. Of course my all time favourite is the title track of Dil Se which I used to carry with me to every shop before buying our stereo system and listen to the song to check for audio quality. For a funnier version of that story (of me buying a stereo), please get in touch with Priya. 

The other thing I've always enjoyed about some of his biggest hits is that he used singers from the Indipop scene in the 90s who weren't actually great singers but seem to be made for that particular song. Think Baba Sehgal & Shweta Shetty for Rukumani in Roja, Remo Fernandes for Humma in Bombay, Sukhwinder Singh for Chaiyya Chaiyya and Mohit Chauhan for Masakali in Delhi 6 (which actually started with Khoon Chala from Rang De Basanti and eventually became a long association). 

When Rahman won the Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire, I thought it as unjust to all the stellar music he had composed before that. In my opinion, if I were to pick the top 5 Hindi soundtracks composed by Rahman, they would have to be the following and in my order of preference. 

1. Dil Se (6 songs and not one that I think is just average)

2. Lagaan

3. Rockstar

4. Yuva

5. Rangeela

The above selection is based on the fact that either all or majority of the songs from the albums are extremely good (again, my view). I admit that my opinion is based only on the Hindi songs of Rahman (or hindi adaptations of his originals) so maybe his greatness when viewed from the Tamil lens is much more than what I have experienced. If anyone has any tamil songs of Rahman that were not adapted by Bollywood and are an absolute listen, please recommend them to me. Will be happy to expand my Rahman experience.  

In my collection, I have 13 full albums of soundtracks composed by A. R. Rahman one of which is more an experimental album called Connections. This does not mean that I do not like the others. Just that I got / bought copies of the MP3 files of individual songs that I enjoyed. 

My entire collection of A. R. Rahman's work is available here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiYwJm3Pb8i9gpRCa9n6yLGyxWL0TA?e=zRBdt4 

Have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Avi

Complete music collection available at https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiYwJm3Pb8i9gpERwAPLpYGKDZor2w?e=vanVoj