A muddled piece the point of which is lost in whether it was about the lyrics or about film music. It further loses credibility when Pinto misdirects the attack - the lyrics are not entirely ARR"s fault, especially when he barely understands the language and when they are in dubbed films. Worse, he ascribes blame to the wrong person - Gulzar for the lyrics of Rang De Basanti. And when he restricts evidence of his criticism to Hindi songs alone, he completely betrays his poor understanding of ARR's music and career. Urvashi and Muqabla nonwithstanding, Vairamuthu won four national awards writing lyrics for ARR-tuned songs. Finally, pity he didn't spot the flashes of brilliance even in a Thakshak.
Mind-blowing music, mindless lyrics Man's World February 2009 He's a brilliant music maker. But he is also a music maker in huge demand and this has huge repercussions on his music. What if Rahman did a film a year? Would we get only Lagaans and Dil Ses and Slumdogs? Would we see fewer Thakshaks? By Jerry Pinto To say life is full of surprises is a cliche, but being in the midst of numerous other assignments, when the sudden call from Danny came through, it was truly unexpected, and to know that Danny had been closely listening to my work caught me by another big surprise... Slumdog... the soundtrack is a result of the mutual admiration we have for each other and was a blast to work on. It was also great fun working with M.I.A. She brings great flavor and energy to the soundtrack. Hope you have the same experience listening to it as we did whilst creating it... as Salim in the last reel of the film states... "god is great'... Welcome to India Danny Boyle style -From A.R.Rahman's official website Many yers ago, who knows how many years ago, the first sounds began to trickle up from the south. Suddenly, truck drivers were listening to Tamil tunes, and the world was beginning to realize that there was something missing in the music that they were listening to. The world? Come on. If you live in Mumbai, the world is Bollywood. When A.R.Rahman finally came out of the shadows, it was with Roja, a dubbed version. This film punched so many buttons in so many places, you couldn't tell what was happening. You didn't want to like it, it was disgusting jingoism, but it was also beautifully shot, it actually went and looked at Kashmir, and there was that soundtrack. That soundtrack. Play it again, Rahman, for old times' sake. * Roja jaaneman tu hi mera dil * Rukmini, Rukmini * Bharat humko jaan se pyaara hai * Dil Hai Chota Sa Godfathers, was this a man or a machine? In its own way each of those numbers has inscribed itself on our memory. Like every young genius, it was bursting from him. Nick his skin, it seemed and a crowd-pleaser would erupt in a geyser of percussion and something that felt like it belonged to the body of an android, generated somewhere else. A planet where there were simulacra of our kind whose sounds were created in a room full of machines and pixellated, rewritten in some modern script, and then returned to us. As I wrote in this magazine many years ago, "Not since R.D.Burman, assisted by a bunch of Goan Catholic musicians who had cut their teeth on hot jazz in Bombay's prohibition nightclubs, had we heard anything so new, so strange, so definitively ahistorically seeped in our music from the sa re ga to the jangling theme of Prannoy Roy's debut news programme The World This Week. All good? All good. But perhaps not all that good. Look at the Hindi film lyric, the great classics that went before Rahman. There were three things on which they were pinned. There was the melody, there was the lyrics and there were the somtimes all-encompassing, sometimes insubstantial memories of where they had occured in a film. Many of those who recognize the song, who use it in antakshari competitions, who hum along with it when it plays on a radio show featuring the music of the 1970s, do not remember that, say, "Koi jab hamaray hriday tod de' is in Manoj Kumar's Purab Aur Paschim. Anna Morcom, the British scholar, whom you may see in Hum Tum Pe Marte Hain, talks about how the Hindi film song starts in a parent film but soon makes its way out into the world where it starts another cycle in its life. Rahman began to systematically destory the underpinnings of one of these: the lyric. Urvashi urvashi, take it easy Urvashi Ungli jaise dubli ke, nahi chahiye fantasy. I know. You have your own version of what the second line is. Everyone does, I am taking my cue from aksharmala.com: Urvashi urvashi, take it easy Urvashi/Hai yeh ek Hindi gaana, nahin koi angrezi... It gets better Chitrahaar mein bijli ud gayi? Take it easy policy Padne par bhi fail ho gaye? Take it easy policy That's almost comprehensible. But here it comes: Baap ne bola, amma ka dushman? Take it easy policy Paap kare aur Ganga naha aaye? Take it easy policy Urvashi Urvashi, take it easy Urvashi Sorry, what was that? As journalist and film reviewer Chetna Mahadik writes on her blog: Take for example, Roobaroo from the film Rang De Basanti (2006). Such fabulous music - my heart dived and rose with Rahman's strokes. But singing it is hell. What cues to use to remember its nonsense lyrics? Take para 2 for example: Jo gumshuda-sa khwaab tha Voh mil gaya voh khil gaya Voh loha tha pigal gaya Kichcha kichhaa machal gaya Sitaar mein badal gaya Now, I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, but I still can't understand how Gulzar, the lyricist connected the gumshuda khwab (dream) in question to bloody bigla loha (melted iron) or turned it into a sitar (a kind of guitar) or what exactly is getting 'khiccha khiccha' out here, and pray why. I suspect, he tacked lots of lovely sounding Urdu songs - and I bet even shit sounds lovely in Urdu - together in complete faith that no one would notice. Well, guess what. Shower singers do. Shower singers have a problem with Rahman? It doesn't stop there. For a long while, we took Hindi film songs for granted. We assumed that it was there, that it would always be there and we could always take a dupki in our ghar ki Gana. In the 1980s, the water dried up. We developed a madness about disco. Think about the songs of that time. "Main ek disco, tu ek disco, duniya hai ek disco" from Khuddar (1982) Jha-jha-jha-jha jhopdi mein, cha-cha-cha-cha chaarpai from Mawaali (1983) Hum to tamboo mein bamboo lagaaye baithe from Mard (1985) Kabhi takiya idhar rakha, kabhi udhar rakha from Raat Andhere Mein (1987) Is it any surprise that we began to turn to ghazals to reflect the more serious problems we had, the problems of love and pain and misunderstanding and disaffection? Is it any surprise that Hindi films themselves began to stink? Rahman is a brilliant music-maker. There is no doubt about that. But he is also a music maker in huge demand. This has huge repercussions on his music. Here is Rahman in the Wall Street Journal, telling the truth 'The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theatre, " Mr Rahman said. "You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing. However, the good thing about Indian cinema is because there are so many ragas in it, you can take a raga and make it a little bit funkier and people can relate to it. Half of the stuff I get away with is like that." But does he get away with it? Can you do that to yourself? Can you write a whole lot of junk, forgettable songs for forgettable films? For the directors, who don't know the difference? For directors groggy with lack of sleep from waiting for the nocturnal Rahman to make his magic? Can it work like that? What do you think if Rahman did only one film a year? Like Aamir Khan? Would we get only Lagaans and Dil Ses and Slumdogs? Would we have fewer Thakshaks? But does he care? Will he? He is no doubt the only internationally recognized Bollywood music director. Before Slumdog Millionaire with its Golden Globes and Oscar nominations there were Bombay Dreams and the musical version of the Lord of the Rings. Not long ago Andrew Lloyd webber told Sify.com, "In Rahman, I met someone who I believe could carry the torch of musical theatre into a new dimension. He's the composer who stands out for me, because I think his songs are so original and yet they have a very universal quality." Webber said, "Personally for me, it is one of my greatest achievements that I brought Rahman into musical theatre. It is sure to ignite an era of competition into the genre, for which I will be always remembered." If that is Webber's bid for immortality, he had better start thinking of another. Bombay Dreams was a hit, it ran for a long while thanks in large part to the thousands of Indians who visit London every year and enjoy seeing the results of the reverse cultural invasion. But its music was derivative, Rahman chewing his own tail. The best songs were the ones we had heard before. The new ones? Do you remember any? There is no doubt that Rahman works harder when he is in the west. (Who doesn't?) Slumdog Millionaire, for which he won India's first Golden Globe, wasn't his first outing in the West. He was the man who provided the music for Shekar Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age. But the film went unnoticed and took the music with it. That's the fate of the film music maker. The fate of his music is connected with the fate of the film. Very few tunes can survive the flop of a film. For instance, how often do you hear that rather nice 'Musu Musu haasi" from Dino Morea's debut Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi? The film tanked and one of Shaan's best songs went with it. Can Rahman transcend the films that created him? The next big question. Watch this space. I'll be quoting myself again soon, I think.
