AR Rahman legendary music compo - Page 13

Rahman misses a Dora

rediff Entertainment Bureau | July 10, 2006 19:58 IST


Anosh Irani has heard people say a play is a labour of love. "I think it's more like being in labour," he said the other day, while accepting an important award for his play in Toronto, "a lot of pain and confusion."


His play Bombay Black took four Dora Moore Mavor awards, including one for outstanding new play or musical. Canada's best known awards for theater, Doras are given annually to plays and musicals produced in Toronto.


Irani, 32, wrote his first story in 1998 on a flight from Mumbai to Vancouver, after leaving his friends, family and advertising job to become a writer in Canada. It was as good a time as any to see if he could actually write, he says. Later, in Vancouver working on a fellowship, he wrote plays such as Matka King and Bombay Black, as well as two novels.

He describes his Dora-winning play as a tale of seduction, betrayal, revenge and that leap of faith called 'love'. It has also been described by some crirics as a sultry, spooky and surreal tale of thwarted love and bittersweet revenge.


Set in a seaside apartment in Mumbai, the play tells the story of Padma, who has set up her daughter Apsara as a dancer for men who have anything but art on their minds. The simmering resentment between the women comes to a head when a blind man comes to 'see' Apsara dance.

Though known mostly for his novels The Cripple and His talismans, and the just released Canadian success The Song of Kahunsha, Irani devotes considerable time to his writing for theater.

But not everyone was pleased with the Dora recognition. 'In a lacklustre year for new Canadian drama,' fretted The Globe and Mail, 'the outstanding new play or musical in the Independent Theatre division went to Anosh Irani's middling Bombay Black.'

Irani's plays, including Matka King, have been seen in tiny theatres in a handful of American cities, but there are good chances that Bombay Black could be seen in slightly bigger theatres (with about 200 seats) in bigger US cities.

Meanwhile, look out for The Song of Kahunsha, a fascinating novel about abandonment, poverty and violence, as well as loyalty, love and hope as seen through the eyes of a young homeless boy in a Mumbai teetering on the verge of racial violence.

While Irani was hot at the Doras, composer A R Rahman was not. Though The Lord of the Rings took seven Doras, Rahman, who was nominated with two other composers who worked with him on the musical, did not win.

Rahman takes Bollywood to Hollywood - and rocks By IANS Jul 19, 2006, 21:00

LOS ANGELES : Hollywood studios like Warner Bros, Fox and Universal were so impressed by a recent A.R. Rahman concert at the famous Hollywood Bowl that they may be actually contemplating giving a Bollywood touch to the next Oscars night. "The American audience was completely blown away by the show. They had never seen anything like it. Many Americans came dressed in Indian outfits and danced enthusiastically. People were saying 'move over Britney Spears and J-Lo, Bollywood rocks'," said Sheeraz Hasan. Hasan attended the concert Sunday with his friends from Warner Bros, Fox and Universal Studios and said they were totally bowled over. There were more American fans (70 percent) than Asians (30 percent) to hear the music maestro at the show titled "Bollywood Night with A.R. Rahman", organised by the KCRW World Festival at Hollywood Bowl on Sunday here, said a press release. Tom Schnabel, who is the programme director of World Music, hosted the show. Rahman opened the show by telling the audience: "When I left Chennai for London several years ago to work on the musical 'Bombay Dreams', everyone congratulated me for going to Hollywood. I tried to explain that I was going to London, not Hollywood, but they didn't understand. So those people who misinterpreted London for Hollywood, would be very happy to see me here today." Several Indian artistes have performed here in the past, but this was Hollywood Bowl's first night completely dedicated to the music and culture of India. The Rahman extravaganza with its arsenal of instruments, synthesisers, guitars, dholaks, keyboards and inspired singing transcended musical boundaries. Other artistes like Sukhwinder Singh, Hariharan, Sadhana Sargam, Madhushree, Musafir and Anisha Nagarajan performed along with Rahman. The most popular song of the evening was "Chaiyya chaiyya" performed by Sukhvinder Singh. "Popular entertainers, including Cher, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Judy Garland and Jimi Hendrix, have all performed at the Hollywood Bowl in the past, and it was truly a historic night as Bollywood came to Hollywood in great style," said Hasan.

Thanks for the updated info, Qwestda.

CNN's 'Talk Asia'with Indian composer extraordinaire A.R. Rahman

Indian composer and musical superstar, A.R. Rahman talks to Lorraine Hahn about his love of music and life beyond Bollywood in this weekend's TALK ASIA. Rahman has more than 50 movie scores and a string of successful albums to his name and is currently composing the music for a stage adaptation of 'The Lord of the Rings'. Called a 'Composer Extraordinaire' by the Indian entertainment industry, he was honoured in 2002 with the Padmashree title, India's highest civilian award, for his contributions to the arts.

Rahman started as a professional musician in his early teens in order to support his family. After a chance meeting with movie director Mani Ratnam, his music soon transferred to the big screen for the Indian blockbuster 'Roja'. With his innovative mixing of technology with traditional Indian songs, Rahman's tunes created a new buzz in the Bollywood music scene. "I was a big fan of electronics …when computer music, and computers and all this stuff came-it was fun, I was having fun". His unique style featured in movie hits such as 'Lagaan' and 'Rangeela'.

Collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber then led the maestro onto the stage with the hit musical 'Bombay Dreams', acclaimed by London's West End and Broadway alike. Rahman views the new stage adaptation of 'The Lord of the Rings', as "probably ten times more than Bombay Dreams! You have like 18 hydraulics moving on stage…in three and a half hours…it's amazing stuff!"

Educated in both the eastern and western music disciplines, Rahman sees the two schools complementing each other. To nurture the next generation of musicians: "My biggest dream now is to start a classical conservatory in India, or Chennai. I think the discipline of classical music is very important – and then we can ring in the eastern elements into it".

AIRTIMES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

For more program information and details on upcoming guests on TALK ASIA visit http://edition.cnn.com/ASIA/talkasia/

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
ARRahman WorldSpace ad launch on CNN-IBN 02:04. "With WorldSpace, there's so much
to hear" - Launch, interview and glimpse of ARRahman's Worldspace ad on ...
http://youtube.com/results?search=AR.Rahman - Cached

A R Rahman's new label to tap musical talent
12th July 2006 10.10 IST
By Agencies

The man who's given some of the most commercially successful music in recent times is all set to "give space to non-mainstream work and less known but immensely talented artists."

Music director A R Rahman isn't revealing much about his new label, except that it will be out by the end of the year and that "jazz and classical music will feature prominently."



But why 'KM'? "It's something auspicious in Islam, a symbol of good luck," says the new look music director whose curly mop is neatly trimmed and combed. "I am just back from a pilgrimage," he explains.

Rahman is equally discreet about an upcoming international collaboration where "he is teaming up with a guitarist of international repute."

After wowing the international audience with 'Bombay Dreams', 'The Lord of the Rings' and the Chinese venture 'Warriors of Heaven and Earth', he is lending music to the sequel of Shekhar Kapur's 'Elizabeth' and a musical 'London Dreams'. Back home Mani Ratnam 's Guru , Shyam Benegal 's 'Chamki Chameli' and the periodical Jodha Akbar are some of the other projects that are keeping him busy.

Rahman, who was recently in New Delhi for a music tune launch, says international productions approach him for his music. "I think it's for my melody, which knows no boundaries." He does admit though that the audience abroad is still niche.

Panchathan Record Inn

Thanks to my informants and proof-readers at rec.music.indian.misc and soc.culture tamil: Jacob Levich, Prince Kohli, Ramyesh, Porky, Dr. Siddarth Dasgupta, R. Sowinarayanan, and Balaji Tirumalai Kumara. . Which Kamal Hasan himself both wrote and produced, as an avowed re-think of The Godfather. Hasan remarked at the time that the feudal lifestyle of rural Tamil Nadu, with its warring clans and blood feuds, reminded him of Sicily. The role of the terrifying ur-patriarch, whose death precipitates the transformation of Hasan's character, was played by Sivaji Ganesan, a major Tamil star of the 1950s and '60s and the chief professional and political rival of M.G. Ramchandran (MGR), whose career is alluded to below. Thavar Magan was re-made in Hindi in 19TK, with Amrish Puri and Anil Kapoor as father and son, under the title Virasaat (Inheritance). . In fact, one of the defining characteristics of Hasan's career is that he has no clearly defined star persona. He is a chameleon actor-star who has made hundreds of films and played every conceivable kind of role, from a slapstick mental patient (in Thenali, a Tamil What About Bob?), to a muscle-bound serial killer (in last year's Abhay) The shape-shifting performances in Nayakan and are only the tip of the iceberg. . The great visual emblem of this metamorphosis is the carnivorous blood-red interior of the character's mouth after he adopts his father's trademark habit of chewing paan. The Hindi re-make, Virasaat, has some fine qualities (especially in the portrayal of the son's relationship with the local girl played by Tabu, whom he eventually marries), but it completely misses the element of terror in the character's transformation--perhaps because the Bollywood star Anil Kapoor was not willing to fully embrace the "negative" aspects of the role in its second stage, including the "low class" habit of paan chewing. . The influential programmer David Overbey, whose enthusiasm also jump-started the Hong Kong cinema craze in the mid-1980s, passed away in 2000. Noah Cowen, his co-programmer on the "India NOW!" series, took over the vacant staff position in Toronto. Cowen is also a founding partner in the distribution company Cowboy Booking. . By 2002 the total had risen to over 1,000 a year. . The direct route by which British theatrical conventions of melodrama entered Indian cinema is said to be the Edwardian-era Parsee theater of Bombay. Phalke himself, and many of the other personnel of early Hindi cinema, were veterans of the Parsee companies, and many early screenplays were adapted from their mythological repertoire. The roots of Indian cinema in traditional theater forms have been explored in much greater detail in later critical works, notably M. Madhava Prasad's Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (Oxford India, 99). . This passage now seems overstated. It's true that even in nominally earthbound Hindi movies like Mard or Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!, in which spiritually inspired animals play turning-point roles, divine intervention seems to be taken for granted as an acceptable means of untangling a snarled plot. But the device is usually deployed light-heartedly, with a glint of irony--more like knowing references to the superstitions of the past than "na•ve" endorsements. Whether Indian audiences took them seriously is another question. . Recent commentators like Prasad have observed that the characters and conflicts of the ancient epics often shaped the plots of the purely secular socials; brother pairs modeled on Rama and Laxman, sympathetic outcasts who were the descendents of Karna. Mani Rathnam's Thelapathi (Lieutenant, 87) re-tells the story of Karna as a tragic gangster drama. . Again I think this perceived gravity was mostly in the eye of the na•ve beholder. Khuda Gawah was dedicated to the memory of the late Manmohan Desai, whose definitive mid-Seventies masala films-Mard and Coolie and especially the wonderful Amar Akbar Anthony-were clearly made with at least half a wink. . This was partly the result of a technical quirk: from the mid-Sixties onward all Hindi movies were post-dubbed, adding an echo-chamber effect to every dialog exchange. Only in a few recent films, like Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai (the former produced and the latter strongly influenced by their star, Aamir Khan), has there been a conscious drive to return to the practice of synch-sound recording that had been prevalent in the Golden Age. . This phenomenon is explored in depth in two books, M.S.S. Pandian's The Image Trap: M.G. Ramchandran in Film and Politics, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1992, and in Sara Dickey's Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India, Cambridge, 1993. The role of centrally organized fan clubs in mobilizing a star's followers politically is discussed in Srivnas, S.V., "Devotion and Defiance in Fan Activity," in Vasudevan, Ravi S., ed., Making Meaning in Indian Cinema, Oxford India, 2000. . Until recently, that is. Bachchan has been cast as Lord Indra, one of the primal Hindu gods, in Arjun Sajnani's's neo-mythological Agni-Varsha, due in 2003. In the wake of Lagaan and Asoka, several Indian producers are launching films on historical and mythological subjects, which have been MIA on the Hindi screen for over a decade. It remains to be seen if these bandwagon offerings will click with the Indian audience, which is more affluent and Westernized now than ever before, but has also chosen a Hindu nationalist party leader as its president. . The 1992 "uprising" became the subject of a controversial Mani Rathman film, Bombay, in 1995, which listed Amitabh Bachchan as one of its producers. Subsequently, Bollywood film idol Sanjay Dutt (whose mother was the Muslim actress Nargis, the iconic star of Mother India) was questioned by authorities about his supposed role in helping the Muslim gangster Dawood Ibrahim engineer the Bombay bombings. . This trend seemed to taper off in the late '90s, only to return with a vengeance (as it were) in 2001, when the top earner at the Indian box office was the smoothly crafted Sunny Deol Pak-basher Gadar-Ek Prem Khata (Rebellion-A Love Story), a jingoistic action romp through the bloody Partition period. . This is one of the few phrases I've revised in the process of transcription. The original was "he sings in character"-a truly bone-headed observation, since even in the most extravagant fantasy numbers in these music dramas, the songs and dances are extensions of the actors' performances by other means. . After completing his so-called "terror trilogy" with Dil Se in 1999, Rathnam has returned to small-scale romantic/domestic dramas that strongly resemble Mouna Ragam: Alaipayuthey in 2001 and Kannathil Muthamittal in 2002. . This strategy was also very shrewdly employed by writer-director Asutosh Gowariker in Lagaan. . A similar device was powerfully employed by director Sanjay Leela Bhanslai in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (I Have Given My Heart) in 1999. Still, songs have continued to be a source of discomfort for some westward-looking Indian moviemakers. Hindi filmmakers with a yen to "cross-over" always seem to think that chucking the songs is the essential first step to "mainstream" acceptance. In 2002, Ram Gopal Varma's gangster film Company, based upon the real-life bhai/bhai conflict between Bombay bombers Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan (see above), established its gritty seriousness by remaining almost songless. . The first film of the so-called "terror trilogy," preceding Bombay and Dil Se. . The fact that Rathnam views the personal aspects of these stories as primary and more significant than the political ones seems to have escaped the notice of the many left-academic commentators who have weighed in on the series. Roja became the subject of intense debate in the pages of the Economic and Political Weekly, inspiring earnest "Cultural Studies" essays as to whether Rathnam had adopted the correct position on the Kashmir crisis. One critic who got it right was Jacob Levich, who suggested in Film Comment that the upshot of Dil Se (a neo-Wagnerian terrorist-love-death saga) is that "India's increasingly belligerent nationalism is rooted in a death-driven, erotically charged fixation on a feminized, Islamic Other." . Feroz Khan directed the Hindi re-make, Dayaran (88), with Vinod Khanna as Velu. . Rahman has been criticized for using Western (ie. "non Indian") tools in his music-making, including synthesizers. This is no joke in an era in which Hindu nationalists have been known to stage communal bonfires to express their disapproval of corrupt foreign imports like Valentine's Day cards. (One wag suggested that if the synthesizer is iscarded, so should the violin, which has been a filmi sangeet staple since the 1930s.) Rahman has gone from strength to strength since making his Hindi-cinema debut in 1995 with the music for Ram Gopal Varma's Rangeela. His music for Lagaan was a chart-topper in 2001. And then of course there'sBombay Dreams... . Thanks in large part to the influence of filmmakers like Rathnam and Varma, which was carried forward in the late-Nineties by such young-Turk Hindi directors as Sooraj Barjatya (Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! and Aditya Chopra (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge), the tendency to pay close attention to the overall look and tone of a film has by now become the Bollywood norm. A particularly interesting example (although it was not a success financially) was Rakesh Mehra's Aks (Mirror Image, 01), a grim Amitabh Bachchan psycho thriller that adopted an effective color equivalent of the black & white chiaroscuro of classic film noir. . There is also a somewhat more elaborate essay on the subject in the book Making Meaning in Indian Cinema (Oxford India, 00), Ranjani Mazumdar's "From Subjectification to Schizophrenia: The 'Angry Man' and the 'Psychotic' Hero of Bombay Cinema."

. Devi was assainated by a relative of one of her u

That Old Feeling: Isn't It Rahmantic?
Richard Corliss on the all-time best-selling recording artist who can't get a break in the States
By RICHARD CORLISS 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.