RMIM Archive Article "45".

From the RMIM Article Archive maintained by Satish Subramanian
#
# RMIM Archives..
# Subject: A.R.Rehman : The New Wave
#
# Posted by: devm@netcom.com (Dev Mannemela)
# Source:  India Today (Jan 1995?)
#


The latest India Today has a feature on  "1994:  the  people  who
made  a  difference".  Rehman  is  the  featured one in the music
department. Here is the article on him...  ( Rehman watchers note
the Govind Nihalani part)


		       A.R.Rehman: The new Wave

For close to two decades, Tamil Pop and film scores meant  mostly
Ilaiyaraaja.  It  was  easy, he never really had any competition.
Till a 25-year old who prefers untrained voices to  silky  smooth
renditions  and  breathing  space  between beats to typical many-
layered, cramped orchestration came along.

Now, two years later, A.R.Rehman looks like he is here  to  stay,
with his digitalised sound based on pop-rock and reggae and fused
with traditional Indian-mainly Carnatic-folk idioms. The  supreme
irony:  he used to play keyboards in Ilaiyaraja's orchestra. Says
Gangai   Amaran,    a    music    director    and    Ilaiyaraja's
brother:"Rehman's  music  is  of the computer age. It is digital,
but intelligent, not just noise. He concentrates  on  his  melody
and has not deviated totally from Carnatic traditions."

What he has done, though, is deviated totally from the  norm  and
rung  up hit score after hit track, moving near effortlessly from
the Tamil scene to take over Hindi film music. And spawned on the
way  a  whole new approach that is finding imitators countrywide.
Even before the Hindi version of  director  Mani  Ratnam's  Tamil
film  Roja  hit the screens last year - in a way, Rehman can be a
called a Ratnam discovery, spotted by him as a promising composer
even against the backdrop of Ilaiyaraja's elaborate orchestration
- the sound track and songs were churning cash  registers.   They
helped  sell  over 25 lakh tapes. Bollywood director Subhash Ghai
has replaced Laxmikant-Pyarelal with Rehman for his next project,
and  pre-release  has  sold  the sound track for a figure of Rs.1
crore, very respectable by industry standards. Art  film  maestro
Govind  Nihalani has also signed him on. And Ratnam has banked on
Rehman's earlier magic with Roja to sell the sound track for  his
soon to be released Bombay for Rs.80 lakh.

Rehman, a former jingle composer, works to exacting standards  of
quality,  but is also an inveterate risk-taker. For Roja, he used
the quavering voices of old women to great effect,  and  for  the
now  famous title track, the non-filmi, pop voices of Baba Sehgal
and Shweta Shetty. For Chikkubukku raile, a Tamil  hit  song,  he
banked  on  an  unknown  voice, its lisp and anglicised delivery.
Rehman likes working with untrained voices, saying a slight  "de-
fect in the singing adds a human touch." A workable  quirk? Typi-
cally, critics say that like other music trends, Rehman  and  his
mood  music will also fade away. He hopes to delay that by chang-
ing and offering new sounds, and staying relatively exclusive  by
accepting  no  more  than  five film projects a year. The fact is
that it could take a Rehman to replace a Rehman. Few  are  likely
to complain.


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From the RMIM Article Archive maintained by Satish Subramanian