Happy Birthday Mozart of Madras!!

AR Rahman

In my catalogue of Rahman film favorites, I didn�t mention some of his best-known songs, because they went into Bombay Dreams. They were plucked from their original movie context (usually), given English-language settings (mostly) by lyricist Don Black and sung by (generally) different artists,

Many of them are sensational; I did say that his score was up there with the immortals. Of the oldies imported to the West, two of the best are from the 1999 inside-showbiz film Taal: everyone�s favorite ballad Love�s Never Easy (Ishq Bina) and the dreamier Closer Tan Ever(Nahin Samne). The sexy, dancey Shakalaka Baby is from Nayak. The girl-group Ohh La La is an Anglicizing of Ek Bagiya from Sapney. Happy Endings, with all its movie-lore references, was originally Rangeela Re from Rangeela.

If one song triggered Rahmania among non-Indians in the West, it was Chaiyya Chaiyya, from another Ratnam terrorist tragedy, the 1998 Dil Se. Shahrukh Khan stands atop a speeding train and (using the thrilling voice of Sukhwinder Singh) performs this update of a Sufi chant, with lyrics by the esteemed poet Gulzar. Andrew Lloyd Webber happened to hear Chaiyya one Saturday when Britain�s Channel 4 broadcast Dil Se, and the song convinced him that the West was ready for Rahman. It remains Rahman�s most pulsing, irresistible song, which gets me juiced and happy any time I put it on RealPlayer. When Chaiyya opened the second act of Bombay Dreams (with Singh, on disc, still vocalizing), it had audiences stamping their feet and cheering. Not after the song — during it.

In the 80s, Chess was misidentified as a rock score (when pop-rock was just one element in a broad table of genres). This year Bombay Dreams was tabbed as Indian, and that frightened people away. The prejudice was that the music would be too spicy for general tastes; the majority, who don�t like musical curry, would scurry. That�s a pity, for the show, and for those who didn�t get to see or hear it. Rahman doesn�t even write what�s thought of as world music. He writes a world of music — so broad and deep, so instantly likable and lastingly satisfying, it is the whole world. I hope that, sometime soon, our part of the world catches up with Rahman. Until we do, an important part of our internal juke box will be bereft.

All About Purity and respect

We all remember  hearing him singing one line "amma tujhe salaam"  , in his magnum-opus "maa tujhe salaam"He explicitly mentioned this line for his mother .since the song was "all about purity and respect". He considers his mother his second god.

Rahman's Father	Rahman with his family	Rahman with his Mother

The battle sequences were stunning, and according to some critics its visuals appear like a painting coming alive. What is heart warming is the fact that A R Rahman’s musical score has come in for a special mention. “A musical score by Craig Armstrong and A R Rahman is virtually a character in itself, huffing and puffing through nearly every scene, provoking tension and calling characters to action,” says the Hollywood Reporter. Chennaiites will have to wait a while before they can be witness to all the grandeur, as the movie is not going to hit the screens any time soon, for the restless souls there are trailers available on the net.

The Mozart of Madras

The billboard outside the Broadway Theatre reads, A R RAHMAN'S BOMBAY DREAMS. That name may mean little to musical-theater devotees, but in the rest of the world it's golden. Like Gershwin or Lennon-McCartney, the name stands for melody, quality, energy, instant hummability — a sound both personal and universal, devouring many older forms and transforming them into something gorgeously new.

At 38, Rahman is nothing new to fans of Indian films. They know by heart his scores and songs for some 70 movies. And they buy his CDs — do they ever! By some counts, 150 million albums of Rahman music have been sold, which could make him the top-selling artist in recording history.

"It's an approximate count," says Rahman, in a phone chat from London. "If you have a hit film, you'll sell 5 million or 6 million CDs. Of my movies, at least 20 or 25 were really big hits." Mind you, he adds, "in India, we don't get royalties. Otherwise I'd be a very rich man. I wouldn't have to come to America!"

Rahman, who has been jetting from his home and studio in Madras to New York City (for Bombay Dreams) and London (where he is preparing his West End musical of The Lord of the Rings), is a world traveler from way back. Born A.S. Dileep Kumar, he began playing piano at 4, and when his father died five years later, the precocious child hit the road, touring the world with tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. The family converted to Sufi Islam, and Dileep took the name Allah Rakha Rahman.

He studied music at Oxford and returned to Madras to write jingles for an ad agency. In 1992 Tamil director Mani Ratnam chose Rahman, then 26, to be musical director of the movie Roja. Scoring an Indian film means writing the songs (with a lyricist) as well as composing and conducting the background music. Rahman proved a master of it all. His songs were recognizably Indian but paraded a world of musical influences, from raga to reggae, from Broadway to Ennio Morricone, with each tune heightening the film's drama.

Soon Rahman added commissions for Hindi (Bollywood) films to his workload. In songs for Ratnam's Bombay and Dil Se, and for the Hindi films Vishwavidhaata, Taal and Lagaan, he created a body of work unparalleled, at least in the '90s, for ravishing melodic ingenuity. "I wanted to produce film songs," he says, "that go beyond language or culture." They went beyond India too. As Western film cultists discovered India's pop cinema, they realized that along with the ferocious emoting and delirious dances, there was a master composer — the man Indians call the Mozart of Madras.

One of Rahman's fans was Andrew Lloyd Webber, who had caught Dil Se on TV and was entranced by Chaiyya Chaiyya, an all-time irresistible bhangra sung on the roof of a speeding train. Lloyd Webber had found not just an inventive composer but also the solution to a vexing problem. "Musical theater had become very predictable," Rahman says. "I think Andrew felt that Bollywood musicals could be a new treat for the Western audience." Bombay Dreams (about half new Rahman songs, half greatest hits from his movies) has run for nearly two years in the West End. This week a new version opens on Broadway.

Rahmaniacs will regret the jettisoning of half a dozen solid tunes from the original. (Three songs have been added.) Hardened Broadway regulars may find the show splashy but naive. Still, anyone with half an ear will hear the most vibrant, varied new score in ages. They will leave Bombay Dreams humming Rahman's songs and singing his praises. Broadway, meet Bollywood.

A. R. Rahman launches his dream-project