A.R.Rahman (Fan Club) - Page 93

A. R. Rahman to endorse WorldSpace products BANGALORE: WorldSpace, one of the world leaders in satellite-based digital radio services, announced that A. R. Rahman, music director, composer and performer, would be its national brand ambassador. Mr. Rahman will produce an exclusive WorldSpace song and endorse WorldSpace products.

http://www.thehindu.com/2006/03/30/stories/2006033003481801. htm

That Old Feeling: Isn't It Rahmantic?

Posted Saturday, Jan. 01, 2005
My job description — critic — suggests that I'm here to criticize, point out mistakes in movies and shows, pull the wings off works of art to keep them from flying. But there's a missionary impulse in those of us who write about entertainment. We're the Murine of journalism: we want to open your eyes to see what you might have missed in familiar pop culture. We also want you to see estimable works that don't get the publicity or endorsements that might persuade you to seek them out. Every 20 years or so, I get missionary about a Broadway show — to be exact, about the music I love in a certain Broadway show. In the 80s the show was Chess, with book and lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, late of the Swedish pop group ABBA. For me, Chess was by far the finest score of the decade, rich and varied and powerful, and thrillingly melodic. It put tunes in my head that still sit up and sing there. In TIME, I wrote about Chess when it was still an album, a year before it was staged in London and three years before a revised version limped onto Broadway. Limped off, too, a couple of months later. The show closed, and Chess resumed its ideal form: an album full of great songs and stinging or surging passions. In 2002, enlightenment struck again. I saw — heard, rather — the West End show Bombay Dreams. Like Chess, it had music by a composer who had written (and sometimes performed) dozens of pop hits. Indeed, A.R. Rahman is not just India's most prominent movie songwriter — in a land of a billion people where movie music truly is popular music — but, by some computations, the best-selling recording artist in history. His scores have sold more albums than Elvis or the Beatles or all the Jacksons: perhaps 150 million, maybe more. As Rahman explained it to TIME's Lina Lofaro for a story we did last April when Bombay Dreams opened on Broadway, "If you have one big hit in India, it will sell more than 5 or 6 million. I've done over 70 movies in which more than 20, 25 were really big hits. And the rest of them are musical hits. The soundtracks sell very well. It's a calculation of all that stuff. Each film I do is in three different languages. Tamil soundtracks sell probably half a million, Telegu sells probably 1 million, Hindi is like more than 6 or 7 million." He added: "In India, we don't get royalties. Otherwise I'd be a very rich man. I wouldn't have to come to America! But come to America Rahman did, knowing that the country was unfamiliar not only with his name and achievements but with South Asian musical vocabulary. That didn't faze him; he'd united disparate cultures before. "When I started in '92," he told Lina, "Indian film music was very segmented. This made me take a film song and produce it in such a way that it would go beyond language or culture. That worked because, basically, I'm from South India [the Tamil capital of Madras]. It worked across North India [Bombay, Calcutta, New Delhi, etc.], which is a completely different culture. And the same formula worked with the London audience" for Bombay Dreams.
DREAM-BAY BOMB Again I wrote about the music that has captured and transported me; I said that "anyone with half an ear will hear the most vibrant, varied new score in ages. Audiences will walk out of Bombay Dreams humming Rahman's songs and singing his praises. If music is the crucial part of a musical, then Rahman's genius will ensure that Bollywood conquers Broadway." Again I hoped that a show might be successful, and its songs click with listeners, broaden our currently cramped musical lexicon. Rahman himself expressed optimism that people in the U.S. would open their ears to his beautiful music and, by extension, India's. "I think it's the right time," he said. "It's a great opportunity for American audiences to know another culture, musically and spiritually." Well, no. The show, budgeted at an outsize $14 million, received weak reviews ("A monochromatic musical in the key of beige." —Ben Brantley, New York Times). Rahman didn't get a Tony award, or even a nomination, for his music — the finest, broadest score in ages wasn't deemed one of the best four on Broadway last season! (Out of a total of about seven.) The Indo-American audience wasn't large enough to keep it afloat, and it didn't attract the idle non-Desi curious. Inserting American Idol notoriety Tamyra Gray did little to pump up the gross. Bombay Dreams ran only eight months and closes today, Jan. 1. As I've written often in this space, it's been ages since the mass of Americans took interest in music (or literature or movies) beyond our borders. It's not that we're xenophobic; in our cultural complacence we're myopic. We make the biggest hits and have the biggest stars. Who cares what goes on in Europe or Asia or Latin America? So again, with Bombay Dreams, I failed; the music didn't take hold. Not Mission Accomplished but Mission Impossible.
WHO IS A.R. RAHMAN? Fans of Indian movies need no introduction to Rahman. Like Gershwin, Puccini or Lennon-McCartney, the name stands for melody, quality, energy, instant hummability — a sound both personal and universal, devouring older forms and transforming them into something gorgeously new. His biography is dramatic enough for a Bollywood epic: poor boy loses dad, hits the road, studies at Oxford, becomes star! He was born in Madras, on January 6, 1966, with a Bollywood star's soundalike name, A.S. Dileep Kumar. His musician father died when the boy was nine, and to support his family this precocious child left home to become a touring tyro musician with tabla maestro Zakir Hussain.

In 1988, according to the website Chalo Cinema, "one of his sisters fell seriously ill and numerous attempts to cure her failed. Her condition progressively worsened. The family had given up all hope when they came in contact with a Muslim Pir — Sheik Abdul Qadir Jeelani or Pir Qadri as he was popularly known. With his prayers and blessings, Dileep's sister made a miraculous recovery. Rattled by the bad experience and influenced by the teachings of the Pir, the entire family converted to Islam. Thus A.S.Dileep Kumar became Allah Rakha Rahman."

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,10 13198,00.html

That Old Feeling: Isn't It Rahmantic?

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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.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,10 13198-2,00.html

That Old Feeling: Isn't It Rahmantic?

Just to be perverse, I'll pick as the best of his ravier numbers I Wanna Be Free from last year's Tehzeeb. The song, with lyrics by Blaaze, is widely reviled even by Rahmaniacs. "What in the world went wrong with 'I Wanna Be Free'?" asks Narbir Gobal on the Planet Bollywood site. "I understand Rahman's urge to experiment, but really this sounds more like a drug induced trip rather than a 'song.' Skip it!" So of course I love it. One reason is the sheer ballsiness of the enterprise. The movie is about a strong woman (the great Shabana Azmi) and her estranged daughters Tehzeeb (Urmila Matondkar) and the mentally distraught Nazu (Diya Mirka). Toward the end of the film Nazu rushes into her bedroom, clamps on headphones and listens to the technopoppy I Wanna Be Free. The picturization shows how moving convulsively, desperately to the funky beat, turning ever more agitated, until we wonder what she wants to be free from: free from her domestic vise, or free from life? The song's vocalists, Anupma and Mathangi, get Fs from the Bollywood swamis; I think they're swell and scary. One spits out the chorus ("I wanna be free I wanna be free / Break the chain and let me be / Free like a bird and free like a plane / I wanna be free from all the pain") in fine percussive style; the other wailing the verse ("Break the shackles" in Hindi) like a stoned goddess who's seized control of an airport P.A. system. Then, as Rahman finally introduces two new chords, and a backing female chorus, she soars into a majestic, anthemic "Freeeeee-dom." She's a bird, she's a plane, she's Superplaybacksinger. And on the screen, the criminally beautiful Mirza (Miss Asia Pacific of 2000), listens to the Freedom chorus and slowly lifts a gun to her head.
BOLLYWOOD OR BUST Bombay Dreams begins with Hindu, Moslem and Zoroastrian prayers, but its heart is as secular as its definition of a Bollywood production number: "cuties shaking booties." The 2002 London version was stocked with references to Bombay films and luminaries, from the 50s hits Aan, Devdas and Mother India to the modern holy trinity of Hrithik, Shahrukh, even Amitabh. Scripter Meera Syal had fun creating full-of-themselves movie actors, like the sexy star Rani, of whom it is said, "She cries 17 times in the first number, though it's a comedy." Rani declares her aspirations as a serious actress. She wants to be in an art film, but she also wants to be recognized: "Can't I be a simple peasant girl — in a very tight blouse?" When the serious picture is completed, one observer says to its director, "I think you've made an important and beautiful film. Of course no one will notice until you're dead." The tone of address toward Bollywood was one of affectionate scorn, as personified by the bitchy gossip reporter Kitty de Souza, who encourages one old man: "Please tell us how you feel — in song, if you must." Kitty notes that the hero is "shooting 15 movies at the same time" and, when he launches into a noble platitude, snides: "I smell another actor ripe for politics." Everyone is disdainful of the airs the hot new kid is putting on. "When you start getting the kidnap threats," the show's villain says to him, "then you can behave like a star." The musical has all the generic prerequisites: star-crossed lovers and love-crossed stars, betrayals and murder, a wedding scene and an all-singing, all-dancing happy ending. As our hero notes, "Can't end on a car crash or something." And if it steals as greedily from Bollywood films as they do from Hollywood ones, it does so without shame. As one thieving director in the show states: "Copyright means the right to copy." The theatrical wit on display here might not be at the level of a Shaw or a Stoppard. But it was knowing; and Syal, a writer and performer on the Anglo-Indian sitcom Goodness Gracious Me, could assume that the London audience would be knowing too — they'd be familiar enough with the genre to get the jokes poked at it. Bollywood films get a fairly wide release in the U.K., often making the weekend box-office top ten. Because the South Asian community is proportionately larger in Britain than in the U.S., the Bollywood culture more deeply permeates the official culture. Indian films can gross millions in the States and not be seen by anyone outside the subcontinental diaspora. The challenge for a Broadway Bombay Dreams, as its producers saw it, was that a New York audience would be ignorant of Bollywood's conventions and thus not understand what was satire and what was just silly. So Thomas Meehan, who had co-written the books for The Producers and Hairspray — two successful shows that parodied old movies and musicals — and charged him with translating into Broadwayese a culture that was not only foreign but obscure. Essentially, he had to write a primer on Bollywood: explain the genre, then rack some jokes about it. Most of Syal's best lines vanished. The show became soft and lumpy. The New York Bombay Dreams was a desperate, failed reworking of the London version — as, 16 years before, the Broadway edition of Chess had been in comparison to the West End original.
FROM BOLLYWOOD TO BRITAIN TO BROADWAY 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.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,10 13198-3,00.html

Best Soundtracks

EVERETT COLLECTION

Cheeky and Romantic: Robin Hood

Kalam, Rajnikant, A R Rahman Tamil Nadu's top icons New Delhi, May 06: President A P J Abdul Kalam, Kollywood superstar Rajnikant and young music composer A R Rahman have been voted the 'biggest icons' of Tamil Nadu in a media survey. The trio, who were chosen from a list of six eminent personalities from the state, bagged 18 per cent votes each out of the over 5,000 polled in the on-line survey conducted jointly by a private TV channel and a newspaper. The other bigwigs who included in the list were versatile actor Kamal Hassan, chess legend Vishwanathan Anand and cancer specialist and Magsaysay Award winner V Shantha. Anand and Shantha received 16 per cent votes each, while Kamal Hassan got the nod from 15 per cent of the respondents.

http://zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=293280&sid=NAT

Adlabs Films to have Reliance brand name

PIYUSH PANDEY

Posted online: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 0000 hours IST

MUMBAI, APRIL 25: In a bid to impart a fresh identity to Adlabs Films Limited (AFL), a Reliance - Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (R-ADAG) company, the group will unveil its new logo with the Reliance brand name for a complete brand makeover. Confirming the development, Manmohan Shetty, chairman, AFL told FE, "A team of creative professionals are already working on it and we expect to happen it soon." However, he did not reveal the details of the brand logo and the new brand identity. Anil Ambani, through Reliance Capital Limited, acquired the majority stake in AFL nine months ago for a consideration of Rs 360 crore. According to highly placed sources in R-ADAG, the group has roped in UK-based strategic brand consulting and design company Landor Associates to design the company's new look. Music director A R Rahman has been roped in for composing the jingles for the R-ADAG companies' commercials. Sanjay Bhel, head branding and marketing, Reliance Communications, had earlier said, "The new brand identity for the R-ADAG companies will be unveiled soon. We have roped in the best consultants in the world. " R-ADAG is expected to use the word 'Reliance' and the Reliance logo either 'behind the visual' or the graphical representation of the letter 'R' with flame in the background, as per the trademark management agreement (TMA) signed between RIL and R-ADAG companies. According to the TMA, both the groups will be allowed to use the logo for their existing businesses and any new business that they may start first.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id =125004

Monday, April 24, 2006

Siege the day: Spike Lee negotiates winner with 'Inside Man'1-6097
By James Verniere
Boston Herald Film Critic
Friday, March 24, 2006

Inside Man
Movie Rating: (R) | Critic: A

If I see a better mainstream American film than Spike Lee's "Inside Man" in 2006, I will be very happy - and surprised.
The film, a thriller about hostage-taking bank robbers in New York City, is more than merely flawlessly cast and marvelously acted and directed. It is also a polyphonic, multiracial meditation on post-9/11 America and yet another Lee love song to the city of his dreams: New York, New York.
Can you believe the whole thing starts out to the percussive beat of music by legendary Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman?
Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington with Kojak cue-ball head and added pounds), a sharp-dressing hostage negotiator, has his hands full. He's under suspicion after $140,000 goes missing during a bust. His freaky girlfriend (Cassandra Freeman) has got to have it (marriage, that is). Her brother, who lives with her, is a jobless drunk, and Frazier's superior (Peter Gerety) has assigned him to take over a standoff at the venerable Wall Street bank Manhattan Trust.
Inside are 50 hostages representing a feisty cross-section of New York City and a band of masked robbers armed with AK-47s and a .357 revolver. Their leader (a commanding Clive Owen) has threatened to start killing them by twos and tossing their bodies into the street if his demands are not met.
Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), the wealthy, leonine banker who established Manhattan Trust shortly after World War II, has a dark secret. With the mayor's backing, the mysterious Madeline White (a lean, witty and, well, white Jodie Foster) has been given a place of authority in the negotiations. Along with his partner, Detective Bill Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who makes George Clooney look homely), Frazier suspects the killers are stalling and that they have some other goal in mind.
If you can imagine a modern-day American heist movie engineered by Simon Wiesenthal, you have some idea of the film's ingenuity. The script by first-timer and Tufts graduate Russell Gewirtz is taut, exciting, intelligent and fast-paced.
Instead of the white-black duo most American films give us, we get two professional black men, negotiators who also "negotiate" the complexities of the New York City police department. A scene in which Frazier questions a racist but competent and courageous beat cop (Victor Colicchio) speaks volumes about ethnic politics in the American workplace.
When we think of the great hostage-taking films, we think of Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975), John McTiernan's "Die Hard" (1988) and the lesser known, if no less great "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1974) - and "Inside Man" ranks with them. And like Lumet's landmark film, which is in fact named by Frazier, "Inside Man" is about much more than a bank robbery.

All the hostages are dressed and masked to resemble the robbers, rendering them free of identity and race, if not gender. But when the cops unmask a blindfolded person sent outside with a package and find a bearded man in a turban, they immediately assume he's an Arab suicide bomber, although he turns out to be a Sikh named Vikram (Waris Ahluwalia). A white bank manager uses Kanye West's "Gold Digger" as his ringtone. Owen's thief is appalled by a racist and violent video game being played by the 8-year-old son (Amir Ali Said) of a hostage

http://theedge.bostonherald.com/movieReviews/view.bg?article id=131876

Siege the day: Spike Lee negotiates winner with 'Inside Man'1-1974
[continued from previous page]

Down to the the smallest role, the cast is first-rate, and the film may be worth seeing just to hear someone call Foster a very bad name and to hear her respond, "Thank you." When Washington is at the top of his game, as he is here, he doesn't speak his lines; he sings them. His greatest performances are a delightful form of behavioral opera and an aural delight.
Working with talented cinematographer Matthew Libatique ("Requiem for a Dream") and veteran producer Brian Grazer, Lee demonstrates a masterful grasp of the filmmaker's art. Viewers should be especially amused by the unspoken connections he makes between a police siege and shooting a film on the streets of Manhattan. Frankly, I have been waiting for years for Lee to stop taking stands and just make a great movie.
Here it is. Who's the "inside man" now?
("Inside Man" contains violence and profanity.)

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