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He studied music at Oxford and returned to Madras to join an ad agency. He wrote some 300 jingles — short songs for radio and TV commercials — winning several industry awards. At one ceremony he met top Tamil director Mani Ratnam, who 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.
Rahman's lyrical prodigality was evident from his first score for his first film. Roja is the tale of a woman whose lover is kidnapped by terrorists. Through this grim political parable, Rahman laced some spectacular melodies that not only serve the drama, they create their own — as in the duet ballads Yeh Haseen Vadiyan and Roja Jaaneman, which first are grounded in recitative, then suddenly ascend into celestial melody. Either one could be a top 40 hit in a more enlightened American pop era. The soundtrack parades the composer's gift for alchemizing outside influences until they are totally Tamil, totally Rahman. He plays with reggae and jungle rhythms, runs cool variations on Morricone's scores for Italian westerns, fiddles with Broadway-style orchestrations. It was an astonishing debut.
A RAHMAN SAMPLER
Soon Rahman received commissions for Hindi films as well as Tamil. Over the next decade his music accompanied, and often transcended, some of the most popular and critically acclaimed Indian films. As South Asians took root around the world and their local movie culture avidly followed them, one could hear Rahman's music even if it didn't puncture the consciousness: as background music in restaurants and posh stores, in the very beat of certain neighborhoods, and of course in the movies that occasionally broke out of Desi ghettos. Lagaan, the insurgent epic centered on an Anglo-Indian cricket match, was nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar. Again Rahman's work went uncited — though not, by Western film cultists, unappreciated. As they 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.
Rahman has said that his work became "a little repetitive and monotonous" with the heavy post-Roja workload. Composing for 50 movie scores and more than 200 songs will test any man's melodic ingenuity. But each film contains a sprig, often a full bouquet, of musical inspiration. And because Rahman is a meticulous and assured record producer, collaborating with the stars of India's teeming "playback" industry (where famous singers record the songs that the movies' stars will lip-synch), he was making not just wonderful music but terrific records. Hits.
Tahna Tahna Yahan Pe Jeena, from Rangeela, is a techno-pop explosion, with veteran playback diva Asha Bhosle giving the number a sassily youthful interpretation; her vocal swings its hips. Sun Ri Sakhi, from the movie Hum Se Hai Muqabla, is a lovely lullaby in waltz time, and Saagar Se Milne a ravishing chorale sun by children. In Bombay, Ratnam's Hindi-language smash, the Rahman contributions range from Keyna Hi Kya, with intricate, warm singing by Chitra, to the macho Hamma Hamma, from Kucchi Kucchi Rakkama (which briefly channels Donna Summer) to Kuch Bhi Na Socho, an uptempo technopopper that midway through adds a children's chorus and goes strangely Hawaiian!
To the uninitiated, this must seem like a list in Esperanto. So rush out to a large music store, or, if you're lucky, one in a nearby Indian neighborhood, and get a Rahman compilation CD. You can also hear some of the songs on websites, including bollyvista.com. It's hard, quickly characterizing a Rahman song, because it can change direction, tempo and speed several times in its three- to seven-min. span. The composer has a voracious musical appetite; he knows Indian classical, folk and pop music intimately, as well as all other kinds of Western and Asian forms. (Last year he workd on the Chinese martial-arts drama Warriors of Heaven and Earth.)
For example, Telephone Dhun, from Hindustani, has a pumping middle section reminiscent of John Lennon's I Am the Walrus. Jhoom Jhoom, from Chor Chore, begins as a perky pop duet and ends, almost, as a choral Christmas carol. The film Love Birds has a number, Come On Come On, that screams Top 40, with bagpipes, crazy fiddles and an all-girl chorus. Strawberry Aankhen, from the movie Sapney, is a perfect-for-Broadway tune, with smilingly melodic, near-operatic recitatives for boy and girl; the song shifts from 3/4 time to a shuffle beat and ends in a meter too complicated for me to parse.
You needn't see the movies to enjoy the music. The terminally goofy plastic-surgery drama Vishwavidhaata boasts a seductive number, Kal Nahin Tha, with the vocalist Sujatha whispering, then warbling her heart out; the production has a tinge of Phil Spector's early-60s work with the Paris Sisters. The Karisma Kapoor-starrer Zubeida boasts a dizzying musical melange: George Martinesque orchestrations for Dheeme Dheeme and George Harrisonesque raga guitar work on Hai Na, a sweet and sinuous samba that's brilliantly vocalized by Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan. The legendary Lata Mangeshkar (she's recorded tens of thousands of songs in her 60-year career) illuminates two Zubeida numbers, So Gaye Hain and Pyaara Sa Gaaon, both with gorgeously elaborate orchestral scoring.
A QUIRKY FAVORITE
Rahman still works the epic side; Swades, Ashtosh Gowanker's first directorial effort since Lagaan, opened around the world two weeks ago. His score for the West End musical adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, rumored to open in spring or summer 2005, will surely contain its share of symphonic work and ballads. But recent Rahman has gone heavier on the rap, techno-pop and house-party side of the musical equation.