Rah-man of the moment - MUSIC

With Slumdog Millionaire, the maestro reaches another high-point in his career
By Bidisha Ghosal
Stepping out for lunch with A.R. Rahman on a crisp London afternoon, Danny Boyle realised the phenomenon his new music director was. "A man on the other side of the street saw us, ran across not caring that he might get run over by traffic, stopped dead in his tracks in front of us, pointed-yes, pointed at Rahman with his mouth open," Boyle recalls with more than a hint of amazement in his voice. "And Rahman nodded and said, 'yes, it is me'. And that was when it hit me-the sheer enormity of this man."

Yes, the stature of Rahman and his genius is as huge as his physicality is small, and it is no longer limited to one nation. This Sufi convert's magic sheathes the earth like a glitter of fairy dust, as mesmerising as it is ever changing. When in 1989 Rahman built his own studio, The Panchathan Record Inn & AM Studios, he started off with jingles for advertisements. It took two short years for Mani Ratnam to approach him and for Roja to happen. With the release of Roja in 1992, India sat up and took notice of two things-a brilliant director called Mani Ratnam and a musical genius called A.R. Rahman. From then on Rahman went from strength to strength with a spate of films that took him to every nook and cranny of the nation. Less than a decade later, famed British theatre personality Andrew Lloyd Webber took him on as the composer for his next stage musical, Bombay Dreams, and the west was conquered.

Subhash Ghai was one of the first film-makers to sign Rahman for a film, starring Jackie Shroff and Shah Rukh Khan and titled Shikhar, in 1994. The film never saw the light of day, but one of the three songs that Rahman recorded for it, Ishq Bina, topped many a chart as the highlight of the film Taal. "I was amazed at the quality of his work; he is constantly looking for excellence and innovation, being rooted in tradition at the same time," says Ghai. "He is a man of art, technology and commerce rolled into one, and as a professional, he is a composer, mixer, programmer, recorder and singer all at once. That simply blows me away!"

Soothsayers had foreseen it at his birth on January 6, 1966, and prophesied that the extraordinary child, Dileep Kumar, was a musical gift from the heavens that would lift the Shekhar family out of mediocrity and into the golden arc lights of the world. Tamil music composer R.K. Shekhar was happy at the arrival of a son after three daughters. He saw the early signs of Rahman's genius-at the age of three, he could play the harmonium. But just as it is with those who are hailed as prodigies, the going was not so smooth.

Shekhar died when the child was nine, his wife, Kareema (then Kasturi) had to see the joint family through financially. The gloom lifted after Rahman joined noted composer Ilayaraja's troupe as a keyboardist and computer programmer. He worked with several other renowned composers like Vishwanathan-Ramamurthy, Zakir Hussain and L. Shankar. It took a Sufi pir, as legend now has it, to remind the family of the prophecies and focus was re-instilled. "Everything happened as he said it would," Rahman later told an interviewer.

The Golden Globe he has won for Slumdog Millionaire (SM) is the latest topping on a host of awards he has acquired along the way-a Padma Shri, four national film awards, four IIFA awards, six Tamil Nadu state awards, 12 screen awards, 21 Filmfare awards, three MTV awards and six Zee awards, besides being hailed as the 'Mozart from Madras' by Time magazine in 2005. In 1997, he became the first south Asian composer to be signed on by Sony to commemorate India's 50th year of Independence, the result being Vande Mataram. Bombay Dreams, which ran for an unprecedented two years at London's West End, opened the floodgates. Rahman composed the score for the Chinese film Warriors of Heaven and Earth and a piece for the award-winning violinist Vanessa Mae.
Shekhar Kapur's two films on Queen Elizabeth fell into his lap, too. But SM has proved to be yet another pinnacle in his body of work. Its musical score is as tangible as the actors, as buoyant as it is soulful, as delicate as it is energetic, carrying the film forward and leaving yet another indelible trail of the creator behind, with echoes of his unconventional voice lingering in one's memory. In short, it is the film, a masterfully layered soundtrack of Hindi, English and Spanish lyrics with the soft Indian sitar shimmying around thumping drumbeats while violins add the momentum necessary to the scenes.

While Jai ho rings out unabashedly with the triumph of faith in the time of terrorism and recession, Ringa ringa is nuanced with tantalising coquetry; Latika's Theme is as gentle as a breeze rippling the surface of a calm lake, full of pathos and love, and Millionaire has more than a hint of evil lurking at the other side of the table. One is forgiven for wondering what the fate of the film would have been without the music, as we know it-wildly intuitive, highly experimental and marvellously evocative.

The praise never affects his disarming humility. Even those who have not worked with him comment on it, like actor-director-producer Farhan Akhtar. "I have only met him socially; he is an extremely unassuming person and so shy that he mumbles and you can't really catch what he is saying," he says. "But when he starts talking music, he is a different man altogether." Rahman's humility, reportedly like his music, stems from his spirituality, which is quite the modern legend. Close friends and colleagues claim he never takes a decision without consulting his God, the most visible manifestation of which are Malik Baba-a Sufi pir -and his mother.

His conversion from Hinduism to Sufism was a result of a natural process of learning, understanding and adaptation, spread over three long years. Since then, Rahman has been fine-tuning his sense of spirituality and launched the AR Rahman Foundation to fight poverty, shortly after being appointed ambassador for Stop TB Partnership by the World Health Organisation. His KM Music Conservatory in Chennai nurtures budding talents, geared towards the creation of India's first symphony orchestra, much like Panchathan-touted to be one of the most sophisticated studios in Asia.

Some of Rahman's forthcoming projects are Dilli 6, Blue and Robot. He has also been signed on for Walt Disney Pictures' joint production with Bharatbala, The 19th Step, starring Kamal Hassan and Asin. At every stage, Rahman's cup has been so full that it threatens to satiate him with that terrible complacency that allows mediocrity to creep into every stellar talent.

Yet, the sweep of 43 years has not been able to turn his sound stale-last weekend the album of SM topped the iTunes chart, something that Boyle describes as totally unprecedented. "Albums don't top that chart, it is usually a single," he says. Well, yet another template that Rahman has single-handedly created for his dreams.
( The Week, Feb 1,2009)________________