[arr] An attempted explanation for why Rahman's music grows on you

[Gopal Srinivasan]

http://ningning.org/blog/?p=100#comment-1393“Have you ever had a die-hard A.R.Rahman fan tell you not to judge
the proverbial book by its cover? I’d bet your answer would be in the
affirmative if you’ve ever had (the good fortune of having) one to
start with. 
	I still remember quite vividly how I would plead
with my Sister to listen just one more time to a song that she has just
spurned. I’d say “Rahman’s songs need time to grow on you!” 
	I
have always wondered why this phenomenon is so pronounced in his music.
I think I have discovered the answer in Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of
Quality (or MoQ for short). He is one who postulated “Quality is a
direct experience independent of prior intellectual abstractions”. 
	I
have a feeling Illayaraja & Co. should take a lion’s share of the
blame for giving people (especially Tamilians) a heavy baggage of
intellectual abstractions they seem to be lugging around. If this be
the case, why should there be exceptions? What makes me see the quality
and apparently my Sister not? The answer is - there is a static good
consisting of a fixed set of patterns in the form of traditions and
laws and there is a dynamic good that is outside of any culture and
that which is not contained by any system of precepts. 
	“Static
good” is what we latch on to and dynamic good is that something which
allows our culture to evolve continually. I embrace this dynamic good
more readily because I can let go of my relatively light baggage of
“intellectual abstractions”. I can say this with a great amount of
certainty also because in my experience age is directly proportional to
the verve with which Rahman’s music is denounced.
This makes Rahman - The Brujo (Spanish word for a sorcerer). Music
composer M.S. Viswanathan can vouch for that – he once said, Buffaloes
get scared when they are exposed to Rahman’s music (sure sign of some
vicious black magic, I would say). 
	MoQ
also answers the all important question – how do you know for sure what
you are after is this so-called “dynamic good”. The short answer is –
you don’t. When I embrace Rahman’s music, it’s because of this “vague
sense of betterness” it gives me. I searched a little bit to see if my
feeling can be given a name. I found my answer in Immanuel Kant’s
“noumenon” (German: das Ding an sich or the thing-in-itself) as opposed
to phenomenon (as seen by the observer). He says its noumenon that lets
us take informed decisions that we think are moral. Its something we
don’t perceive but nevertheless thinkable.
	 Just the other
day, my friend asked me what makes me like a particular movie which was
trashed rather unceremoniously by the whole of Tamil Nadu and beyond. I
didn’t have an answer. I don’t need one because I was after “dynamic
good”. On this, my sister would agree because she declared, the movie
in question deserved the “cult status”.”
 





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