The Rahman effect (the Hindu)

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They say that music affects the way we live. Our thoughts, our joys and sorrows, the way we think and the way we dance; all of it moving to the unending melodies and patterns of the soundtrack of our lives. In our country, this particular soundtrack has been crafted by a master magician over the past two decades. This particular individual has achieved certain things unimagined, constructing a web so expansive that the entire world has now been moved by his music. You can hear his music everywhere — from little villages in the Indian countryside to some of the most expensive performance venues in London’s West End. His musical output can present itself to you in little-known commercial jingles or even the incidental soundtrack of “An Accidental Husband”.

Most of us willingly search for his music, craving its warmth, its musical richness, its subtlety and its uncanny ability to reach deep within our hearts. A.R. Rahman is undoubtedly one of the few Indians who has achieved that critical transition from being a national icon to being a globally bankable musician. And all this for a reticent, deeply focussed composer ensconced behind a studio console in Kodambakkam.

Rahman is one of those composers who require little analysis. Every aspect of his oeuvre has already been examined and written about. He is among the few composers who has had books written about him while still in his 40s. His collaborations are far too many for one article to encompass but include the world’s best known musicians. The Roja man has come a staggeringly long way since that classic soundtrack emerged in the early 1990s. The dizzying heights of international stardom and multiple accolades aside, this analysis looks at his musical trajectory to comb for insights into that beautiful mind.

Game changer

To visualise Rahman’s music is to be cushioned by a ‘bed of sound’ — a hitherto unpredicted marriage of electronics with aesthetics. The music assails your senses, calming the mind in one magnificent sweep of transcendental sound. Each layer of carefully woven musical texture subsequently unfurls. An instinctive craftsman, each layer of instrumentation and voice is carefully proportioned. For instance, close your eyes and think of the theme song from Bombay for a delectable moment. The ‘bed of sound’ formed by string instruments in the lower registers open the first few bars, while a seductive flute softly announces itself slightly later. The piece broadens to herald the arrival of a welcomingly understated percussion before the entire string section takes over, each element enjoying adequate deliberation. To some extent, this loyalty to sonic proportion has proven highly popular to a global audience and continues to be one of his greatest assets.

This quest for elegance in sound and avoiding excess in every aspect has also prompted this master musician to introduce new voices into our lives. Indeed, Rahman can be credited with an entirely new paradigm where the voice becomes an ingredient to the whole, rather, being the basis of the composition. Who can forget Minmini’s ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ from Roja or Shahul Hameed in ‘Usilampatti’ from Gentleman ? Or Chinmayi’s haunting rendition of ‘Oru Deivam Thantha’ ( Kannathil Muthamittal ), Naresh Iyer’s brilliance in ‘Roobaroo’ ( Rang De Basanti ), Rashid Ali in ‘Aditi’ ( Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na ) or Benny’s youthfully exuberant style across multiple tracks?

Rahman’s talent for variety has seen the use of some of our best known classical vocalists: Unnikrishnan, Bombay Jayashri, Nithyashree Mahadevan and Kalyani Menon to name a few. Neither has he ignored the iconic Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, S.P. Balasubrahmanyam and K.S. Chitra who can all be heard in multiple albums.

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