Rahman uses MIA’s Paper Planes – the singer rapping over a compelling sample riff and a rousing chorus line with gunshots and cash registers jingling in the background – in Slumdog. No wonder he discovered the music of MIA, aka Maya Arulpragasam, the war child turned feisty alternative rapper, who very few people in India had heard before Slumdog. Rahman is also globalisation’s favourite child, always abreast of the world music that is making waves. Even this year, he is working on several Tamil and Telugu films, and only two Hindi films.Īnd that is one of the reasons why the 43-year-old composer has often reached out to little-known new singers and musicians from all over the country to lend their voices and instruments to his songs and score. Rahman cut his teeth scoring music for southern Indian films in the Telugu and Tamil languages, before scoring for Bollywood. It helps that he remains the outsider in Bollywood – the world’s most incestuous film industry. Rahman says he is impressed with MIA’s music But Rahman is not your archetypal tune ripper he is, instead, an intrepid fusion tunesmith. Rahman, who converted to Islam some 20 years ago, is also India’s – and Bollywood’s – first truly successful cross-over music director.īollywood has filched tunes from the West for as long as I can remember – check out rip-offs from Chuck Berry, The Beatles, swing jazz and vapid disco for many home-grown hit tunes since the 1950s. All of it is brewed with an unerring feel for melody, swing and soul. It is not surprising then that he is a composer with a staggering range – from raga to reggae to hip hop to Indian rustbelt folk to jungle rhythms to faux baroque. Rahman, instead, is an alchemist of sounds and voices, mixing and melting them in a potion that is usually a joy for the ear and soul. Like many film composers, he is not a particularly gifted vocalist or a player. The golden statue is a global recognition of Rahman’s enormous talent. But it works because it follows the film’s giddy pace, the darkness of its characters, its portrayal of lives on the edge. The score is an untidy smorgasbord of hip hop, Bollywood remix and signature pop anthem. Seventeen years after he began writing music and songs for films, the jingle maker-turned-musician has finally got recognition as India’s first truly global film music composer with his score for Danny Boyle’s sleeper hit Slumdog Millionaire. It was late in the evening, and trombone loops floated down the stairs from the state-of-the art studio above. “We make a lot of noise here,” one of Rahman’s assistants told me wryly when I paid a visit a few years ago. The backyard music studio is also AR Rahman’s atelier. The curiously named Panchathan Record Inn is a nondescript building tucked away in the thriving film district of the southern Indian city of Madras (Chennai). The BBC’s Soutik Biswas discusses what makes Rahman tick. Indian music director AR Rahman’s score for Slumdog Millionaire has won an Oscar for best music, and a second for best song. Rahman is a composer with a staggering range
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