How A R Rahman Has Managed To Stay Relevant Even After Three Decades

Come Independence Day, the Tamil channel Raj TV did one thing without fail for the last 20 odd years: air the Tamil film Roja. 

I stopped watching cable television some time back and am not sure whether the channel aired Roja this year  or not.  Even though it reflects lack of original thinking on the part of the channel to go back to the same movie year after year, it is equally a fact that Roja, especially its music, continues to remain fresh.

The film released on the I-day of 1991, and instantly became a watershed for many reasons. 

It was the first mainstream film that talked of the terrorism unleashed by the jihadis in Kashmir. And of course its music, which has now iconic status, was something out of the blue. 

The arrival of AR Rahman through that film changed the landscape of Indian film music since then.

It is 31 years since his spectacular arrival, but Rahman's music continues to be interesting and relevant. In 2023, he has had four mainstream Indian releases --- Gandhi Godse – Ek Yudh, Pathu Thala, Ponniyin Selvan 2 and Maamannan. 

While the two songs in the Rajkumar Santoshi's Hindi film Gandhi Godse – Ek Yudh may have been the traditional Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram and Vaishnav Jan To, Rahman's music in the three other Tamil movies have been classified hits. 

The songs, especially in PS 2 and Maamannan, have made the young listeners --- many of whom had not been born when Roja released --- use superlatives that were not in vogue 31 years back. ("He has got the vibes, man"). 

Rahman's music always in tune with the times

The thing about Rahman is that he does not alter his approach to stay in the trend. If anything, he is the one creating the trend, as it were. 

The point is Rahman's music has managed to strike a chord with the young set because the man has not allowed himself to be jaded in his approach. His music comes across as fresh because his process in making it remains the same --- sincere and sedulous.

He is unhurried and takes his time to compose. In his 31 years of film career, his output (as an average) has been 4 to 5 films a year.  Years like 1999, in which he churned out music for 9 movies are exceptions --- as it happened, out of those 9, 8 are hall-of-famers En Swasa Kaatre, Padayappa, Taal, Takshak, Kadhalar Dhinam, Sangamam, Taj Mahal and Mudhalvan. 

Out of his around 145 films in various languages, namely Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, English, Persian and Mandarin, almost all of them have at least one song that can be instantly recalled and is a classified hit. This kind of consistency is remarkable and underscores the larger fact that Rahman's work ethic remains enviably the same. 

There are criticisms of Rahman's way of scoring music for songs. 

Some pejoratively put him down as a sound recordist as opposed to music composer and some others go even more low and accuse him of making music through computers. 

These charges are mostly puerile and don't require any rejoinder. 

To be sure, Rahman falls back on techno tools. But not in a lazy sort of way but in an adroit and creative technique that is possible only if one understands both music and technology holistically.  Quite simply, it is not a cut-and-paste job, instead it comes from the deep skill to marry music with its imagined opposite machine. 

There is also this facile belief that Rahman gets his singers and instrumentalists to belt out their music and picks up stuff from them, and then assembles them in a song format. ARR does give performers under him the space to explore their own creative space. But it is always latticed within his own vision. 

A good analogy would be a kite in the sky. It sure has the entire windy space to flutter around but it all depends on the man who manoeuvres its central thread. 

Over a hundred movies and countless 'hits' would not have happened over so many years if Rahman's originality was outsourced as alleged by his unthinking critics.

Rahman's other strength, it would seem, is his humility --- to his art and craft. 

In a sense, that is what true professionalism is all about.  

Add to this, his near fetish to score music without falling into the easy temptation of cliches. 

For instance, it might have been convenient to score music for Ponniyin Selvan with the typical beats and instruments of the past. I am among the one who felt the songs of Ponniyin Selvan did not carry the flavour of that bygone era. But it is equally a fact that Rahman was not aiming for that at all. 

After all, he burst into our consciousness by blazing a new path that was so daringly different from the existing methods. 

His interpretation for PS was modern and that is why his music attracts the youth. That is why when the song Aga Naga arrives on screen, you are not exported to the time of Kundhavai and Vandiyadevan, you are in fact lifted to a timeless zone where the young Chozha princess is singing a romantic ballad that is filled with ‘coolth’. 

In Maamannan, the song Raasa Kannu is verily a minimalist cry of lament as it mostly carries the passion and pain in the voice of Vadivelu while the instrumentation remains admirably restrained. 

Again, he could have gone for a more rustic pungency with underlined beats of 'tharai thappattai', but Rahman eschews it. Not because that is not his style but because that is not the tone of this film. This is the hallmark of a good composer --- understanding music as well as cinema.     

As we said, he does not tailor his musical sensibilities to appeal to the youngsters, instead his greatness is in keeping his approach to music fresh. This, by extension, all carries a hook for the young set.

That is why his best songs from even 30 years back casts a charm over the teens even today. That is why they keep revisiting them regularly. Perhaps, that makes them all, in a sense, Raj TV.