Music Wizard AR Rahman bags 7th National Film award
Music Wizard AR Rahman bags 7th National Film award
The 57 year old music wizard AR Rahman, opens up on his love for period films, his collaborations and the endless possibilities that art offers.
Without mincing words music composer AR Rahman revealed that he is a big fan of music, poetry, filmmaking and tehzeeb of the ’50s and ’60s.
He was recently honored with the seventh National Film Award for Best Music Direction (Background Score) for Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan: Part 1 .
He went on to add that when he won the National Award for the first time for Roja in 1992, he was quizzed by a media reporter that ‘doesn’t he think it is too early in his career to receive it?’ he responded that National Award made him realise that he has had to go ahead from there. There was no reverse button. Now, he feel like this award for Ponniyin Selvan 1 (PS1) was first award. His music is not the same – it is evolving. His mind is evolving, sometimes learning and sometimes unlearning. That’s the fascinating thing about art. If it remains the same, it becomes boring.
This is a project that a lot of people, including MG Ramachandran, tried to do over the decades. Mani Ratnam started working on it nearly 10 years ago and then dropped it. During the pandemic, he went ahead with his army of people to make this movie. He was awed by his courage and passion towards cinema. That’s an inspiration by itself. It was a great experience when we created music for this movie and added layers to it. While adding the third layer, we were convinced something special was being created.
He further added that he can’t match the greats like Madan Mohan, Naushad and Lata Mangeshkar or the aura they created, but can be respectful of their work. It is also a nice experience to research. Sometimes, you need to go back and learn about some of the beauty that’s lost.
He has interesting new projects, including web-series Gandhi, Lahore 1947 and Ramayan, coming up, to which he responded that different projects inspire you differently. Something modern like Thug Life with Mani Ratnam and Kamal Haasan requires a different sensibility. He is also doing Chhaava (based on the life of Maratha king Shambhaji). So, the question is what experience can we create around Maratha culture for Indian cinema. If you look at the promo, it feels right for the character and yet you can’t predict the sound.
On composing music, he says as a composer it’s expected that you will work on both. Take for example, Ilaiyaraaja or Naushad. Of late, people have been asking someone else to work on background score. Composing the score requires eight times more energy and time. With songs, you can finish much faster and move on to the next project. He feels like people expect him to do both and score is something he loves composing.
Background music helps in unfolding the narrative. But is it getting too loud these days?
Sometimes either the good score gets muddled with effects or they put it very high. This has started happening in the last a few years that people are making the score super high and you end up getting a headache. Dynamics is the most important thing in sound there is a low, mid and high. Everything can’t be just high. In orchestra music, dynamics is most important.
You have several long-term collaborators like Mani Ratnam, Imtiaz Ali and Irshad Kamil.
We inspire each other. You go to someone so that they will lessen the burden that you have. If you can make the burden lighter that’s the best collaboration. If we go there and suffer or, when people try to do something that they are not able to or, make me do something weird, it does not end up being a nice experience. We always go back to what’s easy and what gives best results. He hangs on to that.
AR Rahman made his debut with the 1992 Tamil film Roja.
He regularly creates non-movie music.
He learns from many things – life, people, forests, mountains, the sky. He also learns from great works that are not limited to cinema, such as the mystical poetry of Kabir, Bulleh Shah and Rumi. You understand the world better with poetry and philosophy. That helps you understand art better. It frees you from convention and boredom.
News Edit KV Raman
