To anybody who listened to both albums marking India's 50th year as a free nation, it was clear as day. One had energy, originality and stunning variation; the other was somewhat dull and repetitive. Still, peer review helps. So at a function, Lata Mangeshkar turned to A.R. Rahman and said, "I like your Vande Mataram better than my version." The past had acknowledged a future.
Rahman, India's first crossover composer, has marked the future since he made a splash with the film score of mentor Mani Ratnam's Roja in 1993. He has given a new lease of life to movie music and song, taken his form to cut across languages -- Tamil to trendy fusion to national -- and audiences. Rahman made it okay again for yuppies to listen to movie music.
He's still there, a cut above the best, still setting the pace. His critics have a ready line. He combines jazz and pop, pads it up with Indian folk and classical, trims it with Arabic and Greek rhythm frills and voila, it's Mr Please-Everybody Rahman. But nobody can explain how this maestro of sound fires it with a charge, how he picks unknowns to sing for him and gives their voices an edge. "If an album is to please all age groups it has to go beyond current fads," says the fiercely private, religious man who prefers to let his music talk. These days, it talks quietly, like the haunting music for Deepa Mehta's Earth, arguably the most powerful score he has composed since Ratnam's Bombay. As far as anyone can tell, Rahman will be replaced by a Rahman. Get it?
Vande Mataram: Song of three colors
Would
Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and
Mikhail Gorbachev all appear in a film made by a little-known Indian producer
of advertising films?
Could an old patriotic song from the 30's, almost forgotten by modern India,
suddenly become the rage on MTV and be shown simultaneously on every network
from Star TV to Doordarshan to Zee TV?
Could what started out as a Hindu chant in the British Raj be transformed by a
Muslim singer-composer into a galvanizing wake-up call for Modern India, and
catch the imagination of an entire nation? Would Indians of all ages stop
whatever they were doing to watch 300 films about patriotism and rush out to
buy a half million cassettes of a non-filmi song in the first week of its
release?
Highly unlikely, you would say. Well, this year all this came to pass, and
appropriately enough in the 50th anniversary of India's independence. This is the
year that the song Vande Mataram was reborn, hitting the national
consciousness, making those who had forgotten remember, and invigorating the
young who have always taken freedom for granted. And it's all thanks to a small
team -- a singer, a producer and a patriot.
G. Bharat of Bharatbala Productions, popularly known as Bala, is a producer who
has been making advertising commercials for the last ten years for such clients
as Pepsi, Nestle and Seagrams. How his mind moved from Pepsi jingles to
patriotism is all due to his father, V. Ganapathy, a freedom fighter who was
the closest associate of K. Kamaraj in the South. Recalls Bharat: "He's been
pushing me to do something big for India in the media. It all started
with his inspiration. If you look into history, there was one emotion, one
voice that Indians shared in the pre-independence freedom struggle, one passion
and we want to invoke that now as a catalyst for the next 50 years -- and that
is Vande Mataram."
Vande Mataram is derived from Sanskrit and means "I salute my motherland." To
take this forgotten song and make it relevant today was the challenge for this
marketing man. Could one sell patriotism as easily as tires or sodas?
This song has been interpreted in many ways in the last 50 years but Bharat and
his co-producer, his wife Kanika Myers Bharat, wanted to re-vitalize it and
create a new pride among Indians, bringing alive the magic and glory of the
tri-color. Music seemed the logical way to arouse the nation's dormant
patriotism, because as Bharat says, "Music works in India -- it
works internationally also."
Bharat points out that the men and women who fought in the freedom struggle
will not be around in the next 10 or 15 years: " In fact, many of them are lost
to us already. The present generation has no idea how hard-won freedom was; all
that they know is from dry history books or faded footage from the Film
Division of India. We wanted to make the concept of patriotism exciting for
them."
For giving voice to this classic song, Bharat turned to a surprising choice --
music director A.R. Rahman, who has rarely sung except on some of the music
tracks for films. He is better known as the King of Pop, as the composer of
such mega-film bits as "Roja" and "Bombay." His 1995 soundtrack for "Bombay" sold over 5
million units.
Rahman has a talent for merging rock, jazz, Bach, Mozart and Carnatic music and
producing music which goes on in your head long after the song is over.
"Rahman and I were schoolmates and he has done over 150 commercials for
me, so ours is a long term relationship" , says Bharat. "When I
discussed this concept with him, it was also an opportunity for him to move
away from feature film music and to create a new idea. I got him to believe he
has to become a singer. Kanika worked with him for about a year because he
doesn't speak Hindi."
The Bharats wanted the album to have a universal appeal so they collaborated
with international artists and got Sony Music International to handle the
distribution. The concept for the project revolved around three key songs
coinciding with the three colors of the flag to create an album called Vande
Matram. The first song "Maa Tujhe Salaam" represents saffron for the pride and
passion of Indians for their country.
Says Bharat: "If you look at the music video, we have taken a lot of real
people of India
and created a human chain of them. We have shown children -- that everyone
shared the passions of the tricolor. It is to say 950 million are represented
by one flag, and they share one voice which is Vande Matram. It's a very
contemporary approach.
The second song, "Missing Bapu" represents white and is a dedication to the
Father of the Nation. According to Bharat, "What we've done is we have taken
the traditional song in Sanskrit and a female choir and made it a collaborative
effort with Dominique Miller, who is an acoustic guitar player in London. Everyone has
heard the traditional Vande Matram, it's played in the morning on All India
Radio and is the prayer in schools, and we wanted to give it some elements to
make it more exciting."
"Gurus of Peace," the third song corresponds to green, and is a global
statement from India to the world: "We call ourselves the largest democracy in
the world, we have given Mahatma Gandhi to the world, we have given the
philosophy of Ahimsa to the world. Lot of
people talk about world peace -- so I thought let's talk about world peace in
the land of ahimsa, and create a new sound from the sub-continent. It is the
50th year of independence for both India
and Pakistan,
so we decided to merge the talents of the two countries. I got A. R. Rahman and
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to perform together in a song for world peace from the
sub-continent, with children from different parts of the world joining in.
Just producing a soul-and-foot tapping song was not enough for the Bharats. As
he points out, "A lot of musicians can get together and create a song -- that's
not a big deal nowadays. But to make this concept of world peace a big idea, we
decided to involve all the living Nobel Peace Prize winners in this project.
The Bharats got in touch with all of them, and made a ten-part documentary with
them, asking them to share their philosophy of peace in today's world. At the
end of the interviews, each Nobel prize winner said "Vande Mataram!" -- giving
it a universal relevancy. As Bharat explains, Since Vande Mataram means
'Salutations to your motherland' in Sanskrit, Arafat could salute his country,
and Gorbachev his country so it's really a global idea."
The Vande Mataram campaign also included a huge painting done in the three
colors of the flag. It was created before they even wrote the music and they
had an artist Thotta Tharani.
Says Bharat: "I got all the world leaders to sign the painting as a gesture of
commitment. It was all just so unique that everyone got excited. When we showed
it to Dalai Lama, he said what an idea! Shimon Peres spent two days with us.
Indeed all the Nobel Prize winners from Arafat to Lech Walesa got
involved."
Says Bharat: "It was not difficult to organize. They all have great respect for
India
and because this project reflects the thought of ahimsa, it became a very
natural participation for all these world leaders."
Having got the music, the world leaders and Sony as the distributors, the
Bharats then decided to get the people who would matter in India for the next
50 years involved in one-minute short films, sharing their dreams and their
philosophy. Their selection embraced the whole gamut of people across India --
scientists, activists, sports stars, young achievers, villagers, children and
more.
The films would also be a celebration of India's dance, art and natural
beauty and all these features are woven into the videos. Says Bharat: "So it's
a tribute coming through classical dance and natural forms. We even had tribal
dancers. Usually it's very easy to pick up all the famous people, but to travel
to remote villages to pick up tribal dancers and folk dancers and bringing them
into the mainstream is much more exciting.
"In our 300 films we are showing the landscape of India through its dance, its art,
its people, its music and all the natural forms available. Important monuments
where history took place, Sabarmati Ashram, Jallianwalla Bagh, Naokali in
Bangladesh, Varga. Except for those whose families were involved with the
freedom movement who know -- all other people don't know. Children in school
often don't know where is Sabarmati Ashram. We have pictured all this in a
contemporary fashion with music." The music has been packaged in a way that it
can be shown in any media.
Explore, Experience, Enjoy A.R.Rahman - The Man, The Music, The Magic.
Only at arrahmanfans.com - The definitive A.R.Rahman e-community.
Homepage: http://www.arrahmanfans.com
Admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
| New country music artists | Country music artists | Christian music artists |
| New music artists | Unsigned music artist |
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
- Visit your group "arrahmanfans" on the web.
- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
