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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

after the piano rondevu

Night falls, the glow of the evening lamp; sitting on the couch, it's the perfect time to write poetry, create music. _________________________________ Too close, too many, so close that you can be touched, so close that they touch you, and you shrink, you shrink, shiver, contract, and then, all of a sudden, you vanish like a note of music you become a part of those vibrations You become music. ____________________________________ There are times when several things, ideas, thoughts come rushing to you, all of a sudden, at the same time, you remember all your dreams, together, and you want to hold on to them, each one of them, tightly, so that none, not even one of them can slip away, freeing themselves from the clutches, and fly out from the corners of the fluttering mind. ___________________________________ Sometimes I miss certain things, inane, trivial things: I miss living on the top floor of a very high building, with the rest of the existence beneath me, watching the sky as
Read more

after a call and a letter

Sometimes just talking to an old friend whom you don't get to speak to or meet very often brings tears to your eyes. Talking to them you realise how far and few such people are who you consider close to yourself, you realise how much you have missed a carefree conversation laden with memories, you realise how much you have missed the lilt in your voice, you realise how much you have missed being with a 'friend' who's not measuring every word you utter and judging you for your traits, your opinions, your idiosyncrasies. Certain aspects of you come alive only in the company of certain people, certain bonds, certain relationships. I realise most of my close friends share a common characteristic - they cannot tell you in person what you mean to them, they write to you just after you've left or hung up to acknowledge that.
Read more

too quiet, too serene, why aren't all moments like this:)

It's night but the sky is blue, a midnight blue and all I can see are stars, silver specks glittering in serene vastness. _______________________ I still speak to my old friends, at length, quite often, sometimes rather too frequently. We usually end up discussing the current state of affairs in our lives, which often translates to sharing our serious and sometimes silly problems, dilemmas and choices facing us. Sometimes we talk of the wonder years, of the city that was once home to us but where nothing is left now but for memories. Amidst the changes, we stick to our memories , never wanting to go home without writing a song, on paper or air. As we moved on, our new experiences and our new visions have left us so much to talk about regarding our present selves, so divorced are we now our lives that we have to at times keep introducing things, ourselves. It seems that surviving in the competition of the world, they have not enough time to read or write, watch a play, attend a reci
Read more