Enkayaar, Bollywood Trade News Network

A.R.RAHMAN

In the Indian context, how does one situate the moment for an artist, associated with the entertainment industry, as having arrived? One of the benchmark would be, if he is featured on the cover page of a hard-core news magazine, and a lead story be conducted on him. Viewed from this perspective Rahman has indeed arrived, as the latest issue of Tehelka magazine has featured him on the cover page.

His debut album ROJA was described as one of the top ten movie tracks of all the times and indeed it is again when he has won the Golden Globe Award for SLUM DOG MILLIONAIRE, Rahman can truly be called as Mozart of the Indian music. As here is a man who has played with all the nuances of sound and acoustics, to come out with one composition that is a shade better than the other composition. The specialty of Rahman lies in his uncanny ability to pick up voices as distinct and as differentiated as possible and to give them the octave and the horizon to make their mark at the national level.

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In this quest for discovery of new voices Rahman seems to be guided by only one criterion i.e. the voice should have the mystique and have the ability to flavour it with a sufiana ambience. If Sukhwinder has become his alter ego in crooning his compositions with a nuance of sufiana, right from the top when Sukhwinder sang Chaiyan Chaiyan for DIL SE, or the title song of DIL SE itself, and now up to Jai Ho in SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, distinct Sufiana mystique in the form of a haunt rising through the antara and mukhda, and in fact being the binding element has been the hallmark of Rahman's oeuvre.

The scaling of Masak Ali song for DELHI-6 in various music charts is a clear indication about the same. Masak Ali also underlines the fact that if you keep it simple, which is quite a difficult thing to do when the resource base is the elaborate instrumentation of the western music song catches fire like anything. It has the same gay-abandon after a long time in a song from Rahman as Chinna -Chinna of ROJA had or Yaee Re of RANGEELA had. Tehelka of Rahman as an international composer would now have a distinct echo that would reverberate for eons to come.

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