Happy Birthday AR Rahman! (Jan 6th)

As I was sitting and recovering from my fever, you know I had nothing to do but play all the AR Rahman albums one after other.Been about 14 hours of continous music now! Soon I was transported into this lilting land of beauty the man created for us. I tend to associate each album to when it was released, get reminded of my life for example say when “Minsara Kanavu” was released I was in 11th standard and I bought the cassete after days of struggle to amass a princely sum of 45 rupees.

I was 12 when Roja first gently shook me awake and what an experience it was. I had listened to an odd medley of tamil film music, English pop music, bare minimum of hindi and well I did not really think much of music. The freshness “china china aasai” had was remarkable and no wonder he bagged the national award on his debut attempt. Instead of chronologically following his career which umpteen much more worthy and knowledgeable bloggers have done already I will just pick some excerpts.The writing is deliberately disjointed for this is definitely just excerpts!

He introduced great singers to us : Among many Hariharan ( ya he sang ghazals honestly), Sukhwindra singh, Sadhana Sargam, Suresh Peters, Harini , Shahul Hameed, Madhushree, Kailash Kher, Shankar Mahadevan ( I know this is a bit unfair)

Internationalized our film music.: A chill ran through me when for the very first time in MTV asia a part of ottagathai kattiko bgm was played as part of an ad. Mind you this was much before MTV became like another zee tv or before china china aasai was shown as reggae( do you guys remember that!)

Inspired music directors: Can’t stop laughing when Superhit muqabla had 3 version of muqabla from kadhalan all competing. Or when Anu malik said he composed music for Gentleman that rascal.

I often feel extremely bad when some of his real genius works never quite got its deserved approval. I can reel out a whole list of movies that has brilliant soul stirring music but only us “Rahmaniacs” have really listened to it enough to appreciate it.

Eg. 1947 earth, Iruvar, Vandicholai chinnarasu, Kangalal kaidu sei, Bose, Meenaxi, Uzhavan, Water and you could add to this list effortlessly.

I was thinking about my all time Rahman favourites and whittle down the list to just five is no mean task. But here are the 5 songs ( not ranked) that according to me among his best.

1. Kadhal Rojave(Roja)
2. Minnale ( May Madham)
3. Dil se re ( Dil se)
4. Bombay theme (Bombay)
5. Thenkizhakku cheemayile (Kizhakku cheemayile)

His non filmi ventures have been wonderful. OF course we remember some of his ads Asian paints, Regal and I think Leo coffee are some which stick out. Vandemataram took India by storm and even though there has been some mindless debates as to if these “ pristine songs” can be reinvented honestly ARR has breathed life into them adding a whole new dimension to it. Bombay dreams was great and hoping to see it in broadway someday. He is doing a slew of international assignments LOTR (the stage version), an album with Vanessa Mae among a million others.

Some movies I waited for but never saw the light of the day were “Engineer” – Arvind Swami + Madhuri , Ta rum pump um ( Shekhar Kapur) , Shikar ( Subash Ghai) . .

My least favourite ARR movies ( the tricky tricky part) are Parasuram, Udaya, Baba ( akin to suicide not liking this but well what can I do!!!).

Finally the thing that I most looking forward to is the third dimension tour when he performs here in New York sometime in March. I have scouted around but I cant find when if any of you know please do drop a line I will be forever grateful

( mailnavin@gmail.com)

Finally thanks ARR for filling my life with music, the countless hours of that tingling feeling of pleasure . There is no two ways about it ARR rocks!