“AR Rahman doesn’t create music. He lives music. He can touch it,” said Javed Akhtar describing him once. In his interview with the veteran author, Nasreen Munni Kabir, Javed Akhtar revealed how the music maestro was different from all other music directors from his times. In Kabir’s book titled Talking Films: Conversation on Hindi Cinema with Javed Akhtar, the celebrated lyricist took a moment to talk about then rising musician, AR Rahman. He described the process of how Rahman actually creates music and why he usually brings a new voice on the board for his songs. Excerpt:
Rahman is an altogether different person. His language, his approach to a tune and to a song situation is different, and the way he makes a tune, the way he orchestrates it, the way he records it, is totally different from the others. He’s from another planet. These days, I have noticed that he has developed a strange style of making a tune.
Stephen Hawking doesn’t know how the first atom came into existence but after that point he knows everything. In the same way, I can’t tell you how Rahman decides on a particular refrain. But he finds it, sits at his synthesizer and starts recording. He starts singing or playing. He keeps on improving, getting into different avenues; if he finds a dead end, he comes back to the original refrain and gets into another groove. He records the improvisation on a particular refrain for half an hour or forty-five minutes. Then he listens to what he has done, sometimes repeatedly. He then chooses certain phrases — the phrases he likes — and that’s how he makes the tune of a song.
Rahman has tremendous knowledge and understanding of music. His father was a music director and I think eight or nine years old when he started performing in public. Before becoming a music director, he was one of the finest keyboard players in the South. Rahman lives music. He can feel it, touch it. His approach to music is not just about the tune, he doesn’t think about the music in such a linear n. Once we were talking and Rahman said: “You know this tune has a certain mystical quality and words should not be very definite, they should have an enigmatic feel.”
Generally, his tunes are very Indian. When he sings the tunes like this, it sounds purely India. Take the ‘Kabhi Na Kabhi‘ song, when you hear its waltz beat, that symphonic music, you don’t feel it’s Indian. But I think generally his basic tunes are very Indian. Either they are based on folk music or on Raags. But Rahman’s orchestration and his recording have other influences.
He has strange choices. There are so many songs sung by singers who have never sung before and will never sing again. That superhit song — Chinna Chinna Se, was sung by a totally new girl and perhaps that is the only song she has sung. He believes in finding new voices and using new voices because I think somewhere he thinks that if you keep using the same voice, the song starts sounding old. So he experiments with voices much more than any other music director.
Happy birthday AR Rahman. May you keep creating magic with the craft you are blessed with.
