RAHMAN

This is something that I wrote very recently. It's quite different from the way I generally write and the kind of trance I'd written it in is ineffable:)

.What's..what's next??
The song about me.
Oh.Yeah.I like this one...
- Prelude, Got 'Til Its Gone, Janet Jackson


About two years ago, after reading Nick Hornby's Songbook , I wanted to write about my own all-time favourite musician. Immensely Talented Curly Haired South Indian etc. But when I actually sat down to complete this exercise, I was disappointed to find out that writing an essay informed by my taste in music felt about as impossible as compiling a list of songs that best represented A. R Rahman's spirit of genuine spontaneity. Not that I didn't try.
I must have listened to songs like Ye jo Desh hai, Satrangi Re, Rubaroo, Tu Hee Re at least 500 times in my efforts to put down on paper exactly how they made me feel. But Rahman's music is rarely just that, and even though it is never too smart or too obscure for those who prefer the Backstreet Boys, there is something greater there, behind the rhythm, that is vigourous and deft and momentous.
However at the time, I couldn't think of a more sincere or honest way to persuade people about this than to just direct them to a collection of his songs. Any kind of written description of them seemed imperfect or worse, superfluous.
***
I remember the 4 months after I read Songbook as a time in my life marked by both vague unease and considerable apathy towards the world. For one, I completely stopped listening to Rahman. Instead I listened to rock CDs. I suddenly found myself delivering misshapen opinions,all with an air of confused sense to anyone and everyone I came across.
I was only saved from being marked permanently in that way, because I read someone who understood perfectly what I had once wanted to say about Rahman's music and indirectly therefore, changed forever how I felt about many thlngs. This is "What He Said" by Cempulappeyanirar:

What could my mother be
to yours? What kin is my father
to yours anyway? And how
did you and I meet ever?
But it is in love,
our hearts have mingled,
like the red earth and
pouring rain.

***

All poems but especially those about relationships, are half personal-opinion and three quarters heightened-imprecision. The really good ones are timeless and secretly infused with a strange sort of cunning, an impersonal deviousness that its reader is left to unravel by examining the words over and over. And over. This, I find, is like Mr. Rahman's music. You have to give his albums a couple of listens before you are convinced that the man is a genius. For instance, I hated some of his songs when when I first heard them, but now everytime I hear, I feel blessed.
And never mind what that tells you about me, but what does it tell you about the way Rahman arranges sound?

***

If A. R Rahman were ever to tune Neruda's love poem into music, I imagine it would be something sweet and playful but also something just a little violent. Maybe, a delicate synth pattern grounded by the dry steady beat of a drum and sung in by someone who has a high smooth voice. If listened to in its entirety, Neruda’s woman will find impossible not to be touched by this song, I think. Her face might still look unimpressed when the last chord shudders to an end, but her eyes will have become tender and her mind will be clear: all that anguish and doubt Neruda only hints at swept away to uncover older, happier memories.
This is one way to describe A. R Rahman's musical style.

***

And here is another.
Everyone knows that the lyrics do matter when it comes to appreciating truly great music
But see: if this were a Rahman song, that wouldn't be all there is. Even when his tunes no longer sound new but only familiar, like one's heartbeat, you always get something fresh from listening to them a second, third or five hundredth time. And it's not that I am gloomy about my prospects of ever finding the kind of inordinate happiness that music (and only music) offers, but when I play a Rahman CD, that becomes entirely irrelevant.
Everytime when I am facing some conflicts or internal chaos and I listen to his music, I find that I can press my heart against his music, and if I let it, its warm, liquid notes usually pull me through to the other side. There's this knotted turn in the violin harmony towards the end of a song of his that promises to tell me everything I will ever need to know about passion, dreams and purpose, and better than a poet ever could. That is what he does.