TIMEs Mag Praises ARR. [Archive]

3rd January 2005, 05:42 PM

"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."

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
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."

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.

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.