For all the bastards who left to Goa and went to a night club, I am sure the experience would have been similar to the video... Really cool guys... For once this made me glad that I wasnt a part of it...
Quite an interesting read on the entire background of how things work before we hear his final tunes..
How Rahman composes..
1. Rahman gets an offer from the director , and he studies the script everything . If he likes it then he agrees else he drop down the offer
2. Then he sees the actor/actress and accordingly determines the singer.
3. Rahman asks the director to give the exact situation of the song and why it is needed. If he is satisfied, then he proceeds.
4. Then Rahman sits and composes the song on his own and in his voice records every song.
5. Calls the singers after 12 am in the night [Mark it only after 12 am] and makes them hear the tunes.
6. Recording starts . He never modifies the song as per the singer but he modifies the singer as per the song .
7. Every sound in the studio is recorded even if a singer sneezes or coughs it is recorded and it is edited . If u remember in Kadhal Virus there is a song by Mano~ O Kadhale. There he coughs at one part. He had coughed it in the first day and then Rahman never got any realistic cough after that so he simply included the original cough.
8. A song recording goes upto 3-4 days . Sometimes male and female singers are recorded differently and then successfully mixed
9. After the vocal is over music starts . He gives his idea to his musicians and then the musicians suggest the background tune . 90% times Rahman doesn’t like them and then he himself gives them notes and the musician have to play them. Few songs however had tunes inspired by his musicians like his flutist Naveen and drummer Sivamani. The musicians love ARR since he gives them freedom and helps them grow their talent .
10.Later the vocal is added to music or vice versa and then comes the technical part. Every interfaces start working , every part is edited , reedited and software are used and lets not get much into it ,but by the time a song is finalized it is one month and the best version is out. Some say he uses technology, but come to his studio you will know he uses technology only to polish stuffs.
Mixing songs
He does all programming on Logic and also mix in Logic then he makes some pre mixes, like all choruses in two tracks, drums in two tracks, bass in one track if stereo then in two tracks and then he bounces all the tracks to EUPHONIX to give some analog warmth. But Rahman uses all Logic plugins FX.
Everyone is using Logic from Salim Sulaiman to Shankar Ehsaan and Loy. Logic is just like a Pen and Paper for a Poet. Rahman doesn’t need any Logic even he can use any other software cause he has music in his mind.
What is Logic?
Logic is an audio recording and mixing software. Most of Indian composers use this software. For more details check www.apple.com/logic/ . You can buy and download it if you have an Apple Mac Computer.
Rahman also uses or used Absynth. You can hear one preset from Absynth in Kannathil Muttamital title song. The flute kinda sound with a rough string sounds behind it in the intro. Most of the songs, especially in the last few years feature many synth sounds, probably from absynth, or some other softsynth. The beeps, filtered sounds etc in many songs like Yeh Rishta, Meenaxi and a couple from New, Kangalal Kaidu Sei etc can be done in Absynth. For more details check out www.native-instruments.com/
Audio Samples
Have you guys ever heard about audio samples. Well Rahman is the first person who used a lot of samples in his songs and the second person is Ranjit Barot. Ranjit used to work with Rahman. Ranjit programmed drums in Humma Humma.
And now everybody is using samples in Mumbai like Salim Sulaiman, Sandeep Sherodker, Jacky, Inderjeet Sharma, Ram Sampat & Sandeep Chowta. If you guys think that how can Sandeep Chowta make sound like A R Rahman, those are samples.
Here are some instances for Samples
1. Shabba Shabba with African voices. Those are samples not real Africans.
2. Spanish claps in Jumbalika. Samples again.
3. Chinese vocals in Latka. Its a Chinese Sample from the CD ( Spectra sonics Heart Of Asia)
4. Background beat in Latka song from Indian. Later Anu Malik and many other used the same loops in many of their songs eg: Mehbooba song from Ajnabee.
5. Killer drum beats in Rangeela songs. Drum samples from the cd (Best Service XXL 1500)and its a long list.
6. Final beats of Mukkala Muqabla sounds like Dr. Alban Africa. That is too a sample. It is not composed by Dr.Alban either. Same beats used by Sandeep Chowtha in Kambath Ishq song.
7. Main Background beats in Mangta hai kya from Rangeela.
8. Early bands like Deep Forest and some Euro techno bands used this concept a lot. Thats why title bird sound of Thillana Thillana from Muthu sounds like Deep forest songs.
There are many other samples Rahman used in many of his songs. It is not copying but just using a commercially available sample.
When Rahman was recording for “Jaage Hain” the Sound Engineers told him that lets record the song in a low mod ie Track 5 and later FDM it to a higher track but Rahman sing it singularly in track 15. It is his original however Madras Choral sound was probably modulated.
Composing Back Ground Music
He doesn’t actually sees the entire movie , he makes the director explain the entire script 100% and in every details and then asks for a demo. However the first version of BGM he gives is modified and re modified numerous time after seeing the film. The BGM for the movie Guru was modified just a month before the public release. Rang de Basanti BGM was actually purely on script. Some parts of the movie was modified as per the BGM. Remember the scene when the rebels walked into the radio station and the music that comes behind it. The scene was actually pretty different but according to the music it was modified and the modifications came in their walking style, check the scene carefully you will find their feet falling on the ground as per the music tune. Rahman composed this music for a period of two years. If he really took two years to compose the films music then see his dedication. Amazing.
Rahman’s recording and mixing
Not just Rahman, about all music composers use loops or samples which they buy from distributors like Sony or Apple. Its like instead of calling a performer like a guitarist to perform for his/her song a composer buys his recorded piece and uses it. These pieces are royalty free its like the guitarist sells it to Sony on an agreement and Sony distributes it through out the world. That is why you find same sound effects in two different songs of Rahman some times. Loops are not necessary to be only a single note. It can be chords or even a piece or a scratch.
How many of you have noticed this in Rahman songs especially those who are musicians. All his songs irrespective of the mood has a constant ‘pads’ or ’strings’ backing. The chords played with the pads and strings is also not conventional. They are the 7ths, 11ths or Diminished chords. They give the song a ‘feeling’, a ’soul’. Quite Technical
A classic example is the song “Thirupachi Arivalaa” from Taj Mahal. Check out the pads in the songs. Another is “Aye Udi Udi” from Saathiya. Remove the pads these songs become soul-less and very plain.
The only other person who uses this same method is Harris Jayaraj. And for sure he learned it from Rahman .Wonder if more music directors should do the same.
A R Rahman started learning Indian classical and Carnatic classical in 1992. Since almost all his songs are Raga based just wanted to clarify that he learned classical before or after 1992.
How does he compose a new tune. Does he play it in his piano or does he write the swaram or how does he go about conceiving a song out of nowhere and create a master piece.
Its a fact that no softwares in the world can create a tune. The people who learned music will laugh their stomachs out if someone tells them that Tere Bina or any song is a product of a software. Now what can a software do. What does Rahman do in his studio with all those softwares. Why does he always updates his software. It is very simple. Just a brief concept.
1. Rahman records a songs over a period of 10-15 days. A singer sings one song perhaps innumerable time till Rahman gives a hands up. Once that signal has been got the singer realizes that his job is done . Now Rahman sits over his singing and edits the bad parts and couples all the best parts and after another day of hard work the singers work is ready. The singer never sang that song continuously but his best parts are selected and sampled .
2. Rahman then records music or what you call as BGM. After that he mixes it with the vocal part. Then suddenly he may realize that both of them don’t gel well in frequency. And then frequency division modulation takes place. Its a huge process friends which very well packs the music and vocal part.
3. Let us take an example of Shreya Ghosal. Rahman needs Shreya Ghosal to sing in track 15 ie the Highest. But Shreya can sing only till 11. So what can Rahman do. Let her sing in track 8 -9 in which she is comfortable and then simply phase modulates the vocal to appear as if she sang in track 15. This is a very costly process and risky too so Rahman has done it only 5-6 times.
So A R Rahman is a genius , not a technician. He uses softwares but doesn’t use to “produce” tunes. Instead he use them so effectively to “edit” tunes. And that is why perhaps he is the best. He uses Technology but his originality is maintained in each song.
A software has no brains. It will do what you tell it to do. So if anyone program his software to sing “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa” then yes, you are right. Software can produce tunes. And everyone is pretty sure Rahman uses custom made softwares. The bottom line is Softwares Do Not Produce Tunes.
What do u mean by a Track ?
Many people have different definitions of tracks . “Track” is not a musical keyword but it pretty software related. We divide a tune into several sound parts. Every channel has a baud rate frequency. For example if you hum a voice in a low scale u may call it as a track 1. The song “Jaage Hain” goes very high enough to be called as track 15 . Empirically track is a pitch depth value versus volume. The intersection of the graph is the resonant value. This value is what the purest and the “Virgin tune” we call. It is difficult to acheive this reasonable value due to several reasons but Rahmans studio is feature adapted to it. Almost 99% of his songs are reasonabaly valued .
We heard a lot of spectra sonics stuff in Rang de Basanti. Especially the amazing pads from spectra sonics atmosphere. He’s also been using swarplug, an Indian instrument plug in, which can be heard in water and the background score of RDB. The santoor you hear in “Chanchan” from Water is actually swar plug doing the job.
Its easy to use software but it ain’t easy to create stuff with software. Samples are an easy way out and most music directors are going the samples way because its easier and quicker.
This includes people like Salim Sulaiman sadly, they lack tunes. Himesh, lacks creativity and singers, Shankar Ehsaan Loy , these three guys are actually pretty good, Sandeep Chowta. He’s not even a music director according to criticism, more a DJ kinda fellow.
Someone like Rahman, takes the pain of creating his own samples as well apart from using purchased ones. Now thats a huge difference. This combined with the responsibility of making path breaking tunes is a big big task. Make no mistake about it.
What thus we say can be summed up thus give the same equipments, computers, keyboards, the musicians, the software, the samples etc. To any other music director in the country they still cannot match A R Rahman it takes a genius to create something extraordinary like he does.
Being the user of these sound editing softwares we can give us suggestions. The usage of sound editing softwares such as Neundo, Cubase ,Sonar and Logic is very helpful and reduces our work in the technician point of view. Though these sounds are pleasant and filling they spoil the naturalizing of the song. But Rahman’ comprehension on the editing softwares and plugins and using them in his songs and BGM is fantastic. But that in itself is his drawback. A R Rahman has one of the largest collections of samples in Asia.
Music Director vs Music Composer
“Music director” is not really a Music Composer. He is basically the guy who makes the tunes for the songs. Then he gives it to the lyricist for the lyrics. This works vice versa too. Lyrics first and then the tune. Now comes the major difference between “Music directors” and “Music Composers” like A R Rahman and Ilaiyaraaja.
The Music Director hands over the tune and lyrics to the Music Arranger who will fill in the music into the song according to his knowledge and experience. The Music Director will only direct the music as in supervising the process but does not necessarily compose the BGMs, the rhythms, the chords, bass lines etc. in the song. These are done by the Music Arranger, who will arrange for the violin sections, the brass sections, the percussions, the beats etc. according to what he knows.
Needless to say, the Music Director, more often than not, is not even proficient in playing a musical instrument. He need not be with the method mentioned above.
This is why most Music Directors sound the same movie after movie after movie. Because the tunes are different but the arrangement is the same. The Music Arranger guy is only doing his job and ending the works as per deadline. No creativity there. There is no effort to innovate.
A R Rahman though, it seems, sits and works on each piece of music in his songs. Each sound and each element of the notes are heard by him, evaluated and then entered into the song. Plus he has great musicians to bring out quality sounds.
In other words, Rahman actually designs the sound for each of his songs. To all those who scoff at use of technology in music this sound design is enhanced only because of the technology.
This sound design combined with great tunes make great masterpieces. Any surprise his songs are so good ?
A R Rahman ~ His Professionalism
1. A R Rahman is perhaps the most professional musician of India. He has this habit of looking out for talented musicians and then he calls them to his studio and records and samples their stuff. And then the musician packs his bags and is off to where he/she belongs. The best part comes now, whenever Rahman will use that sample/loop in any of his songs, he makes a point that he pays that musician his royalty !! Isn’t this wonderful ?
2. One of the musicians has played the Dholak in “Taal Se Taal Mila” and here’s the story. When the musician went to Rahman’s studio for recording the Dholak he was all set as he found the rhythm not that challenging. But the real fun came now. Rahman asked him to wear Ice cream sticks tied with rubber-bands to his finger (the Chati i.e. side which produces the high pitch sound). This was indeed unique as Rahman was pretty clear on what “sound” he wanted.
Thats A R Rahman for you. The best musician India has produced after R D Burman.
Something About Music Sampling For Starters
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or element of a new recording. This is typically done with a sampler, which can be a piece of hardware or a computer program on a digital computer. Sampling is also possible with tape loops or with vinyl records on a phonograph.
Often “samples” consist of one part of a song, such as a break, used in another, for instance the use of the drum introduction from Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” in songs by the Beastie Boys, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mike Oldfield and Erasure, and the guitar riffs from Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded” and Tone-Loc’s “Funky Cold Medina”. Samples in this sense occur often in hip hop, as hip hop sampling developed from DJs repeating the breaks from songs and Contemporary R&B, but are becoming more common in other music as well, such as by Slipknot’s sample player Craig Jones.
Early Cases
Sampling using tape recordings goes back at least as far as 1969, when Holger Czukay used traditional Vietnamese singers on his record “Canaxis”. Czukay and his former band used samples often throughout the seventies.
One of the first major legal cases regarding sampling was with “Pump Up the Volume”. As the record reached the UK top ten, producers Stock Aitken Waterman obtained an injunction against the record due to the unauthorized use of a sample from their hit single “Roadblock”. The dispute was settled out of court, with the injunction being lifted in return for an undertaking that overseas releases would not contain the “Roadblock” sample, and the disc went on to top the UK singles chart. Ironically, the sample in question had been so distorted as to be virtually unrecognizable, and Saw didn’t realize their record had been used until they heard co-producer Dave Dorrell mention it in a radio interview.
Types of samples
Once recorded, samples can be edited, played back, or looped i.e. played back continuously. Types of samples include:
Some facts about A R Rahman
1. A R Rahman records most of the songs in the late night because he belives that is the time at which a person’s sound will be at it’s top best.
2. Rahman allows singers to sing there own versions of the song separately and chooses best among them.
3. There are more than 1000 samples available in Sony and Apple.
4. Rahman has used a ghatam loop in the Rang de Basanti background score from Apple’s loop library. The same loop been used elsewhere. But it sounded a lot better the way Rahman used it.
5. The song “Maiyya Maiyya” has a flute interlude in the beginning similar to the one in Anu Malik’s “San Sanana” song in Asoka. The flute sample in Mayya Mayya is a commercially available sample. Both the Asoka song and Mayya Mayya have been arranged and programmed by Ranjit Barot.
6. Chinna Chinna Asai was composed as a ’sad’ full song initially but later was changed to a happy song.
7. ARR first composed only the first stanza of “Tu hi Re” song for Bombay. Later Mani Ratnam shot the song and after feeling confident of the song, Rahman completed the composition.
8. Thiruda Thiruda and Duet took most time in composing followed by Box-office Flop Mangal Pandey.
9. Maiyya Maiyya was recorded in Toronto and music was added later as usual.
10. In Thiruda thiruda there are two special songs in it. One is Konchum Nilavu which is fully computer programmed. Another is Rasathi where you can’t hear a single instrument.
No matter how intensively A R Rahman uses technology, but we are always astonished how he stands unique with same softwares. Its all creativity Guys. Always wonder how he pours soul in music and creates a situation through music, a world in which we are lost.
A R Rahman is a great Sound Engineer of all the times. There are certain frequencies which sooth our brain, may be A R Rahman know which frequency level or modulation will leave soothing impact on listener’s brain. Its possible and we can achieve such frequency levels through softwares.
A teenager lived alone with his father, and the two of them had a very special relationship. The father believed in encouragement.
This young man was the smallest of the class when he entered high school. His father continued to encourage him but also made it very clear that he did not have to play football if he didn't want to. But the young man loved football and decided to hang in there. He was determined to try his best at every practice, and perhaps he'd get to play when he became a senior. Even though the son was always on the bench, his father was always in the stands cheering. He never missed a game.
All through high school he never missed neither a practice nor a game, but remained a bench warmer all four years. His faithful father was always in the stands, always with words of encouragement for him. When the young man went to college, he decided to try out for the football team as a "walk-on." Everyone was sure he could never make the cut, but he did. The coach admitted that he kept him on the roster because he always puts his heart and soul to every practice,and at the same time, provided the other members with the spirit and hustle they badly needed. The news that he had survived the cut thrilled him so much that he rushed to the nearest phone and called his father.
His father shared his excitement and was sent season tickets for all the college games. This persistent young athlete never missed practice during his four years at college, but he never got to play in the game. It was the end of his senior football season, and as he trotted onto the practice field shortly before the big play off game, the coach met him with a telegram. The young man read the telegram and he became deathly silent. Swallowing hard, he mumbled to the coach, "My father died this morning. Is it all right if I miss practice today?"
The coach put his arm gently around his shoulder and said, "Take the rest of the week off, son. And don't even plan to come back to the game on Saturday." Saturday arrived, and the game was not going well. In the third quarter, when the team was ten points behind, a silent young man quietly slipped into the empty locker room and put on his football gear. As he ran onto the sidelines, the coach and his players were astounded to see their faithful team-mate back so soon. "Coach, please let me play. I've just got to play today," said the young man. The coach pretended not to hear him. There was no way he wanted his worst player in this close playoff game. But the young man persisted,and finally feeling sorry for the kid, the coach gave in. "All right," he said."You can go in." Before long, the coach, the players and everyone in the stands could not believe their eyes. This little unknown, who had never played before, was doing everything right.
The opposing team could not stop him. He ran, he passed, blocked and tackled like a star. His team began to triumph. The score was soon tied.In the closing seconds of the game, this kid intercepted a pass and ran all the way for the winning touchdown. The fans broke loose. His team-mates hoisted him onto their shoulders. Such cheering you've never heard! Finally,after the stands had emptied and the team had showered and left the locker room, the coach noticed that the young man was sitting quietly in the corner all alone. The coach came to him and said, "Kid, I can't believe it. You were fantastic!
Tell me what got into you? How did you do it?"
He looked at the coach, with tears in his eyes, and said, "Well, you knew my dad died, but did you know that my dad was blind?" The young man swallowed hard and forced a smile, "Dad came to all my games, but today was the first time he could see me play, and I wanted to show him I could do it . .. . "
Happy Father's Day :)
How often do we lose hope on things? From the most trivial to something you have wanted all your life. Our actions and hopes within could be contradicting at times and we may tend to feel we are working towards a lost cause. Sometimes a thought just pops up and says 'Enough is enough!! I have had it all!! and cant stand it anymore.' This thought might vary according to situations but the feeling is somewhat similar, right from being frustrated with ourselves or with others or sometimes we even start questioning the purpose of everything. In spite of this we carry on with our lives in hope that we will be able to do something about it or things will get better as times goes on.
People thought Einstein was absurd when he contradicted Newton's Classical Mechanics and came up with his theory on special relativity and general relativity. I think relativity is an amazing concept, see how human mind perceives things differently to different situations? Sometimes it seriously makes me think 'Are we the ones really controlling our minds and actions or does it just happen like many other things which we have no say on?' I strongly believe in the saying 'Success and Failures are only choices we make in life at every point of time'. Choices again comes back to the mind and there isn't anything more important in life than keeping a balance of what your mind thinks and how you react to it, I believe this makes you a person whom you are today.
Someone the other day was talking about peace of mind and how going for a morning walk everyday and visits to temples had bought them an immense joy and peace of mind in life. We are all so distracted in our lives that we find it exceedingly difficult to keep a still mind which keeps wandering faster than time. I had been to the Harminder Sahib Temple in Amritsar a while ago and I thought I was rejuvenated and it bought a great piece of mind, I have no clue what it was, was it the sight of the splendid Golden Temple by the lake or was it the recitation of the spiritual songs sung there heard in stunning clarity, thanks to the acoustics by Bose. It really got me thinking to what was I doing to myself? If all of us are struggling to do something which is as basic as this, it makes me wonder how complicated have we got ourselves into? Wasn't the idea to keep things simple and go easy? I find it's mostly us who dig a grave for ourselves and put ourselves to situations where we are today.. We are no where close to where we truely intend to be and we have no one to blame except us. With so many conflicts within ourselves and with so many questions unanswered, we often advice people about life, spirituality, talk about God.. I just can't but laugh at ourselves.. Pity such creatures..
I dont have answers to any of these because all of us have a spark within us and there's always hope which tells you that I shall get you thro' all that you do.. I couldn't but agree with the title which aptly says 'There's this lost cause I beleive in called myself"
It was that time of the day when you are really restless, idle, bored, tired and what not... I really needed something to get my day started but in a way was too lazy to even have my cup of coffee and then this happened...
The Scene..
Watching Chennai 600028 with English subtitles on it... Majority of the people I know don't like watching movies with subtitles ON for it could be distracting and could spoil the feel of watching a movie, and many might be knowing how irrelevant the subtitles for Indian movies could be, it can sometimes get worse than watching a Hollywood flick dubbed in Tamil. But, as I mentioned, I was too restless to be doing anything and I had to stretch to get the remote, so forget it... For people who have watched this movie will know its about gully cricket and there's this commentator who gives his commentary through all the matches they show on the movie.
There is this scene when the commentator tries to flirt with a lady next to him calling her Inji Idupazhagi, thanks to Kamal Hassan's Thevar Magan for the term and guess what the subtitle for that said? It was translated as 'Ginger Waist Beauty', man gotto give it to who ever had written the translations, seriously I couldn't stop laughing watching it and if it wasn't enough there were a few bloopers which followed, I actually stopped listening to the dialogues and started concentrating on the subtitles. The next scene Shiva calls someone 'Sanniyenne', the subtitle said 'Planet Saturn', 'Dei Pudingi' was 'Hey Remover'. Man, how funny was that? I think that provided me enough adrenaline to get me going through the day..
But on a serious note, I really think Directors who have taken so much pain to take the movie should spend sometime atleast reading these subtitles, leave writing them themselves, for I don't know what people not knowing the language would interpret it as.. especially things like 'Sanniyenne' as 'Planet Saturn' was hilarious.
Then I just happened to open this subtitle file of our Thailaivar's Baasha, just have a look at Rajini's introduction song translated in English.
I am autofellow autofellow
Four knowing route fellow
Justice having rate fellow
Good people mix fellow
Nice singing song fellow
Gandhi borning country fellow
Stick take means hunter fellow
Big people's relation fellow
Mercy having mind fellow da
I am all poor's relative fellow da
I am always poor people's relative fellow da
Achak means achak only; Gumuk means gumuk only
Achak means achak only; Gumuk means gumuk only
Town become big, population become big
Bus expecting, half age over
Life become hectic in time, exist in corner of street
Ada eye beat means love coming they telling
You hand clap means auto coming I telling
Front coming look, this three-wheel chariot
Good come and arrive, you trust and climb up
Mercy having mind fellow da
I am always poor people's relative fellow da
Achak means achak only; Gumuk means gumuk only
Achak means achak only; Gumuk means gumuk only
Mummy motherfolk, danger not leave
Heat or cyclone, never I never tell
There there hunger take means, many savoury
Measurement food is one time
For pregnancy I come free mummy
Your child also name one I keep mummy
Letter lacking person ada trusting us and coming
Address lacking street ada auto fellow knowing
Achak means achak only ; Gumuk means gumuk only
Achak means achak only ; Gumuk means gumuk only
Yeah!! I never knew it had so much meaning!!
I was inspired to write this article about 'Kadalai' by someones thought of an Ideal date, which was 'A lousy walk on the shore by the moonlight having kadalai and putting kadalai (Tamil slang for light hearted romance) with someone very dear.' Wow!! How could I possibly not think of this before... Somethings like these makes one realise what a wonderful language Tamil is...seriously I cannot think of any other language as effective as Tamil is...
Anyone reading will definitely be interested to know many such lingo's in Tamil language. Do have a look at this. Request you to go through the entire list with the origin/history of the words used..
Now coming back to Kadalai, Wiki defines Kadalai as 'Verbal Flirting' and the origin of the word possibly from groundnut vendors who provided snack food to couples on the beach, or in trains. Connotes flirting without serious intentions.
Some Quick facts about Kadalai..
This was one good mail I received recently...
Though very simple, thought it was really meaningful..
Life either happens to us, or we take hold of life and live it.
Here are 10 Ways to get a life and start living it.
1. Give yourself permission to claim your life. That's right ?Permission. You're the only one who can decide you are in charge of your life. Even though it feels like you're not supposed to do so,Turn off the internal editors, the old tape recordings, the "should's, Have to's, and musts", and the rules that didn't come from you.
2. Define what living means to you. It's not as hard as it sounds.Just picture yourself at the end of your life looking back. What words would you want to describe how you lived your life and who you are as a person?
3. Stop living in the future. Every time you think "someday" or "when I have time I will," stop.. Ask yourself, "Why not now?" Think about this sentence, "I always wanted to, but never did." Start doing the things you always planned to do. Choose your life every morning. Plan one thing you will do that day to feel alive.
4. Surround yourself with people who enjoy living. They've obviously discovered how to have a life and live it. Why not hang with the pros?
5. Lay down your pain and your anger. Carrying them around makes living harder and less fun. It doesn't bring anything, and it steals a lot.
6. Let the losers win. Don't argue about things that you don't care about. Unless there's some real threat, let the folks who have something to prove, prove what they need to. Why waste your living time trying to fix what's wrong with them?
7. Create energy. Jump to forgiveness and love, then figure things out. Most conclusions we jump to are not only wrong, they're negative.Negative conclusions lead us to prepare a defense. Being on the defensive isn't living. It's hiding from life.
8. Learn the physical symptoms of when your head and heart become disconnected. We know when we're having a knee jerk reaction, when we're feeling sorry for ourselves, and when we're being blind to people's feelings. We can remember how it felt physically while we were behaving badly. Get to know those symptoms, and you can stop the behavior. Living life will feel a whole lot safer because you won't be in danger of shooting yourself in the foot.
9. Take small risks that push your boundaries in every way. The joy of life is packed in learning that matches our skill set. When we stretch just a bit intellectually, physically, emotionally, we grow. Living is growing. Even your cells know that.
10. Value and protect the people and the places you care about. A job Isn't a life. It's just a part of one. Let the people you care about come first, and let everyone know that you do.
Re-read numbers 1 and 2.
We come into life with whatever we've got.. It's ours to do with. It took me a while to figure that out ? That my life isn't just what happens to me, that I could take hold of it.
From the time I was born, I was told that everyone of us are responsible in some way or the other. When I first joined my LKG, I remember my teacher telling me while teaching alphabets that I was no longer a baby and asked me to concentrate on studies. Then when I went to the 1st standard, I was told that I was no more a LKG student and not to behave like one. Year after year, this continued and when I went to the 8th grade, my uniforms were upgraded to full trousers, I remember someone telling me that we have crossed a stage in life and should no longer behave like little brats. Then came the 10th grade and everyone I ever knew was like, this is going to be the most important and decisive year in your life, the year which is going to decide your fate, your future... must have been true.. After a point people stopped telling us these things and we could sense things on our own and at one point I realised 'Our actions were going to determine our destiny'.
Education was, to say quite a struggle.. a struggle which reaped really good results.. By results I mean, all of us are where we are because of what we have done till date and education plays a significant part of it if not the most important.. From then on, most of what we do is because of our own interest and no more a compulsive action. Well, looking back in time it is really fascinating to see how much we have gone through in the little time, so many transitions, so much learning, disappointments and many other feeling which cannot be described.
Failing in exams, scoring 100 in a paper, playing cricket, bunking classes, going for tuition's, pranks with teachers, first day in college, experience of watching a movie FDFS and not missing a single movie released during 4 years of college - language no bar, getting blasted at home for being so irresponsible, thrill of checking exam results online, the various crushes all through life, campus placements, interviews, first day at work, becoming a lead and also some personal moments like someone dear turning against you, dear ones who have changed so drastically when you never realised and then at a point couldn't relate to them anymore.... and many such things..... I am sure we have gone through all this ...
Many small things have led to big impacts in life, somethings make you stronger and somethings make you more determined and motivated... we learn things from so many unknown people... little things everyday. And ofcourse there will be this one living character in life as your role model whom we will be permanently in awe of... Going past all these, living everyday and experiencing so many things, we tend to groom ourselves at a better person, try to be in someones perspective and avoid doing mistakes which we have seen people do... All in pursuit of one thing... 'Being a better person in life'... It might be interpreted in different ways... for some it may be career wise, for some it might be something else.... but it all comes down to this...
But in process of this, there's one thing which comes to mind which most of us fail to see or rather understand.... "We seem to be too keen observing the clouds which pass by everyday and more often than not fail to see the vast sky beyond it, it might seem fancy for a while.. but it just goes away in no time before you realise its gone....." Having a clear vision in life of how to lead life is entirely upto us though it might be influenced by many around us.. and it is a lesson which might seem easy but probably take a lifetime to learn..
This article about Rahman was published in the recent edition of Tehelka, do give it a read. Truly a musical genius in every sense.
The Mystic Master
BEFORE THE gift, there was the prophecy. After their first child — a girl — was born, an array of astrologers told the disappointed Tamil music composer, RK Shekhar and his wife Kasturi, that they would soon be gifted with someone extraordinary: a son whose name would illumine the world, a musical genius whose soul would arc across the sky.
Dileep Kumar was born just over a year after on January 6, 1966. The name — AR Rahman, mysteriously wrapped in instant and acetylene fame — would come later, but by the time he was three, the signs were firmly in place. He was, indeed, the fortunate one: he could play the harmonium before he could speak; and soon after his birth, his father inexplicably began to prosper. The word spread. His sister Kanchana, the elder one, music coursing in her blood too but born without prophecy, remembers her father taking the little boy to Sudarshan, a reputed music director, when he was four. “I hear your child can play anything,” Sudarshan challenged him, “let’s see if he can do this.” He played a particularly complex piece, then covered the harmonium with his veshti to make the playing more difficult — a kind of surrogate blindfold — and handed over the harmonium to the young boy. The calm little boy executed it perfectly. Humbled, Sudarshan leapt up and embraced the child.
The virtuosity has never abated since. On January 11, 2009, watched by elated countrymen across the world, Rahman became the first Indian to win the Golden Globe — a coveted precursor to the Oscars — for his musical score in the acclaimed Hollywood film, Slumdog Millionaire. This may be just one more crest in the stream of awards and recognitions that have lapped around him — a Padmashree, four national film awards, 12 Screen awards, 21 Filmfare awards, among innumerable others — but the excitement around the man Time magazine called “the Mozart of Madras” has never been higher, his name never more luminous.
In Chennai though, away from the champagne speeches and applauding lights of Los Angeles, a more profound underlayer of Rahman’s music reveals itself. It is three days after the award, the maestro is yet to come home. The city is unusually quiet; the shops are closed, the roads are empty. It is Pongal and everyone is on holiday. Rahman’s studio — AM Studios — the most state-of-the-art, hitech studio in all of Asia, usually bustling with dozens of musicians and directors and sound engineers, is empty too. The four-storey white and lilac and parquet building has the aura of a prayer house, zinging with the vibration left by an intense concentration of human energy. In the heart of the studio is a large room that can host a 30-piece string orchestra. Facing it, in a glassed-off control room sits a massive mixing console — a Neve 88R, estimated to cost Rs 4 crore — a console with such a daunting array of knobs it could tune the universe. Elsewhere in the building, small soundproof rooms house gleaming pianos, synthesisers, violins, harmoniums, and drums. In a large, airy room on the roof, instruments of every conception sit waiting for the imaginations that will finally unlock their sound.
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A world to win A visbily moved Rahman accepts the Golden Globe award |
The silence is a kind of serendipity: it allows one to sense what very few people know. Rahman’s music — always new, groundbreaking, wildly intuitive, experimental, a kind of sound that masters of cinema craft like Baz Luhrmann, Shekhar Kapoor and Danny Boyle say “they had never heard before” — is deeply rooted, in fact, “sourced”, from Rahman’s idea of divinity.
When Rahman, or Dileep as he was known then, was nine, the radiant prophecy seemed to falter. His father, Shekhar died suddenly — on the very day his first film as a music director was released. The golden circle was breached, the family was devastated. Kasturi was certainly overworked, and insufficient sleep had precipitated her husband’s cancer. Although her sister and parents were part of the large joint family, there was no one to turn to. It fell on mother and son to find the money to keep the family together.
Rahman remembers it as a difficult, opaque time when there seemed to be no answers. His mother made some money by renting out musical instruments, but by the time he was 11, Rahman was more often out of school than in, repeatedly called away from the playground by his mother to record music for a fee. It should have felt like an escape: he was never particularly interested in school or playground games, for that matter. In fact, he had such low attendance and marks, he was asked to leave his first school. He went to another local one for a year, and then joined MCC. Barely a term in, when he was about 15, he gave up school altogether. He played the piano and guitar on television shows, and became a sort of “roadie” with different Malayali, Tamil and Telugu composers. For a year, he played with the celebrated Iliayaraja. It should have felt like an escape, but it didn’t.
Kanchana says her brother wanted to be an ordinary boy — sleep late, play carom — and used to resist being woken at seven by his mother to practice the piano. But the mother, fervently knocking at temples, churches, and mosques, was determined to refuel the prophecy. Suddenly, around the time he was 11, destiny came knocking again. The family met Karimullah Shah Kadiri, a Sufi pir (at a railway station, goes the apocryphal story). Karimullah foresaw the boy’s entire future and said Dileep would come to him in 10 years. “That was the turning point,” Rahman admitted in a rare moment of candour to a CNN interviewer. “Everything happened as he said it would.”
ON HIS music teacher John Jacob’s insistence, Dileep applied for a scholarship to study music in Trinity College, Oxford — a crucial interlude that exposed him to western classical music. In 1987, around the time he was 21, moved by everything that had happened to them — dreams, oracles, signs — Dileep, his mother, and two younger sisters converted to Islam (Kanchana would convert a little later).
Two years later, in 1989, he set up Panchathan Record Inn in his backyard — the foundation stone was laid by Karimullah Shah — and began to make jingles for ads. In 1991, legendary director Mani Ratnam took a chance on the untested youngster and invited him to score the music for his new film, Roja. With the divine assurance of a prodigy, Dileep proceeded to break every rule with his debut.
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Family man Rahman, seen with wife Saira Banu, wants to spend more time with his children |
Now, on the eve of Roja, seven new names were offered to him: Dileep chose Allah Rakha Rahman, the first of the 1,000 names of Allah. Soon after, Roja was released, and as the pir had prophesied, the Isai Puyal — “musical storm” — AR Rahman was born. Wrapped in instant and acetylene fame.
Like other prodigies across time who have bent the arc of history, Rahman’s debut track was unlike anything anyone had heard before. It sent ripples through the industry and got Rahman the National Film Award for Best Music Director, the first time ever for a firsttime film composer. In 2005, Time magazine picked it as one of Top Ten Movie Tracks of All Time. “Rahman is like a weaver. With Roja, he created this incredibly intricate, complicated sound that no one had ever tried before,” says lyricist and friend Prasoon Joshi. “The Indian music and film industry had always relied on extraordinary melodies and singers, the mukhara and the antara. But Rahman played with the structure, he layered the melody with different strands of sound, he created spaces where one could listen to a single string or enjoy a beat before returning to the voice. He created a river with many side streams you could step into. It was unlike everything that had gone before.”
Over almost two decades since, the experimentation has never stopped. Director Rakeysh Mehra likens Rahman to the great Chinese travelers of 2,000 years ago, who wandered the world gathering influences from faraway lands. Western classical, Indian classical, reggae, hip-hop, rap, rock, pop, blues, jazz, opera, sufi, folk, African beats, Arabian sounds — there is nothing Rahman has not dared to meld together. No new voice he has not dared to use. No texture of sound he has not strained to perfect. The stories are legion. Of how he got Maryem Toller, a Canadian, to sing the hit song Mayya, Mayya, itself triggered by the sound of a man selling water, saying mayya, mayya — Arabic for water — overheard on a Haj trip. Of how he got R&B singer Ash King from the bylanes of London to sing Dil Gira Dafatan for the forthcoming film, Dilli 6, although King didn’t know a word of Hindi, just because he liked the texture of his voice. Of how he spotted Naresh Aiyar, who had been sidelined by judges like Adnan Sami in a Channel V talent contest, and picked him to sing the sublime song Ru ba ru. Of how he spotted Blaaze and Sukhwinder and Madhushree and Vijay Yesudas and scores of other new voices he has launched in the world. Of how he took 17 years to give his sister Kanchana — or Raihanah, as she is called after her conversion — a song of her own in the blockbuster Sivaji, because her voice finally matched the sound playing in his head.
The stories are legion; what is less known is Rahman’s understanding of his own gift. Unlike Mozart, the legendary giant TIME magazine compared him to, whose creative genius seemed to flow from some mercurial, manic yet sublimely flamboyant ego, those who know Rahman say he has absolutely no ego. A little like the shy Srinivasa Ramanujan, the untutored mathematical genius from Chennai who believed his prodigious acumen was channeled to him by his family devi, Namagiri, apparently Rahman too believes he is merely an instrument. As director Shekhar Kapoor puts it, “Rahman does not believe music resides in him, but that he sources it from a field of consciousness that exists eternally. He believes that to access or to be able to reach that ‘field’ you need to be very pious. I believe as long as he continues to believe the music is not his, that he is merely the conduit, he will have no limitations.”
The search for piety — the complete purity that will keep him in touch with his music — has meant a kind of twin journey for Rahman. On the one hand, there has been an ever amplifying outward honing of craft, a restless search for new stimuli, a mastery of technology, a constant self-education, a perfecting of the conduit. Parallel to that has been an ever intensifying private inward journey towards submission and surrender to the will of God — a destruction of ego, an effacement of self.
At the heart of this journey are two figures. Arifullah Mohammad al Husaini Chisti ul Kadiri — son of Karimullah Shah, no more than in his 20s or 30s, who took his father’s place as Rahman’s spiritual teacher after his death. Said to be descendants of Hazrat Mohammad, Arifullah’s dargah in Karrapa sharif, Andhra Pradesh, is both pilgrimage and refuge for Rahman. ‘Malik Baba’ Rahman calls him. AM Studios, set up in 2005, is probably named after his initials — Arifullah Mohammad — an educated guess, because even many of Rahman’s closest associates say they don’t know what the initials stand for.
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God is music Rahman, seated at his piano, believes his creativity is divinely inspired |
(My brother is the most secretive man in the world,” laughs Raihanah. “If I ask him for a house, he will give it to me. If I ask for a studio, he will give me one, just don’t enter mine, he will say.”) But an observant eye cannot fail to miss it. A small picture of Malik Baba adorns the entrance to the studio that hosts the tuning console for the universe. There are curious palm-marks in auspicious chandan on many windows and walls — quiet signs of faith.
RAHMAN IS the most spiritual person to ever touch my life,” says Mehra. “He has zero ego, there is no ‘I’ or ‘me’ in him.” “It is true. He has a surreal influence on people,” agrees Deepak Gattani of Rapport entertainment agency, who constructs most of Rahman’s extravagantly mounted concerts and has been a friend for 16 years. “He has taught me there is more to life than we normally see. He never has knee-jerk responses to things.” “He is sent by God, kudrat ne unko banaya hai,” says singer Kailash Kher, who has toured with Rahman often. “One day you will see him in Los Angeles, standing with people like Weber and Boyle and the owners of Fox. The next day he might be sitting in a dargah among fakirs and dervishes.” “His spirituality is not something others can understand,” says his sister. “I am in complete awe of him. He is a blessed thing. God considers him a special child. He has surrendered totally — every move, every action, every thought is surrendered to God.”
This surrender has taken many forms. Absolute simplicity. Frequent visits to dargahs. Generous alms to the poor. Sleeping on bare cement or sand if necessary. A sublimation of material desire not related to music. (Rahman apparently loved cars, but never drove anything fancier than an Innova until he finally indulged in a BMW last year, 18 years after monumental commercial success.) Sometimes, for others, the forms of surrender have seemed more irrational and inexplicable. For instance, his daughter was born with a hole in her heart, but Rahman refused to have her operated. Prayers, he believes, can change destiny, so he surrendered to the healing faith of his pir. Miraculously, his daughter was cured when she was two.
(“God always looks after him. It is uncanny. What others have to knock for just comes to him,” laughs his sister. Press for examples and she says facetiously, “You might be traveling abroad and desperate for some good hot food. People like us will have to worry about going out in the cold, catching a taxi, finding a place. But Rahman will just be sitting and praying and then, suddenly, someone will come and ask him, what would you like to eat? North Indian or South Indian?”)
But in other cautious snatches from friends respectful of Rahman’s desire for privacy but willing to share their marvel of him, slowly a small trickle of illustrations pile up. Gattani talks of an unexpectedly stormy night in Bangalore. Thirty thousand people are gathered in the Palace Grounds. Rahman’s pioneering Three Dimensional Concert — staggering in scale — is about to start. A sudden squall catches everyone unaware. The backdrop collapses, the grounds flood. Amidst the panic, an unperturbed Rahman locks himself in his green room for half-an-hour. When he emerges, he tells his associates to ask the crowd what they want — have the show or postpone it. Have it, they say. On cue, the rain stops, the songs roll out. Just as Rahman sings the last bar of Vande Mataram, it starts raining again. “It was astonishing,” says Gattani. At other times, when an important decision is to be taken, Rahman retreats into himself and says he will ask for “permission”. A couple of days later, depending on how the divine consultation has gone, he calls back with either a refusal or a go-ahead. Take his most cherished project — KM Conservatory, for instance, a pioneering school of music he has dreamt of for years. Initialed after the elder pir, Karimullah? Again, no one knows. For a long while, there was talk of partnering with the government. Finally, Rahman said he would seek “permission” for the partnership. It did not come and Rahman went it alone — funneling huge sums of personal money and passion to start the conservatory on his birthday last year.
Malik Baba is the most visible manifestation of this surrender. It is to him that Rahman turns to most. Often, to a critical eye, such faith can seem to skate precariously close to subjugation rather than creative surrender. But it seems to work unerringly for Rahman. “Everyone may not understand it, and it may not work for everyone,” says superstar Aamir Khan, “but Rahman is a very spiritual person, and in a curious way, his complete surrender to his faith opens him up completely. It frees him to work.”
The other figure key to Rahman’s journey is his mother, Kasturi — or Kareema Begum, after her conversion. “Amma”, as she is universally known — a jovial, quintessentially motherly figure — has remained a powerful leitmotif in Rahman’s life. “Their relationship is like the bhakt for his bhagwan,” says Kher. He follows her wishes with unquestioning faith — “aastha” is the evocative word he uses. “If she had asked him not to go to LA to receive the Golden Globe and go to a dargah instead, I am sure he would have done it.” She, in turn, is affectionate, solicitous, the keeper of the prophecy, often traveling with Rahman on his tours abroad. Ask her about her son and she says, “He prays five times a day. He is Allah’s gift.” “Old worldly” her elder daughter calls her, momentarily dismissive, and through the crevices of the brisk praise that follows, you catch a glimpse of the inevitable shrapnel around a blessed sibling — the mistakes of a conservative family, the unintended but painful eclipses, the little neglects, the big oversights, the sisters unconsciously less precious than the boy. “We were there, somewhere in the atmosphere,” jokes one of them.
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The foundation Mother Kareema was determined that her son should become a musician |
BUT NOW it is the fourth day after the award, and late in the evening. The maestro has come home and the driveway to his house is swarming with waiting journalists. There is a comforting smell of incense in the air. The windows in his reception are curtained with white veshtis, carpets adorn his walls. It is a decorative detail repeated in all his buildings.
The Panchathan Record Inn — Rahman’s private studio, his sanctum sanctorum — is a lush, comfortable room draped in rich red curtains, alternated with white. Computers, consoles, instruments and hi-tech gizmos strew the room like books might in another’s study. It is past midnight before we meet; a journalist’s deadline looms over the meeting like a vengeful shadow and in an unfortunate inversion, Rahman is game for a long conversation, but I am in a hurry. The encounter is briefer than it should have been. Still, none of the conversations around him has prepared one for the man himself. Neat, boyish, he is incredibly youthful, light-hearted — calming in an odd way — and disarmingly open. Every account of him has steeled one to meet a man of few words — the secretive brother one has to tease things from. Instead, Rahman is willing to talk about everything. And is, often, unexpectedly funny.
As we retrace his life, it is suddenly cast in more complex light than music, prayer and simple surrender. “I did not convert overnight, nor did anyone force me,” says Rahman.
“It was a long process. I was really intrigued by the whole Sufi thing and had gone very deeply into it, puttingx aside three hours every day to learn Arabic. I was drawn to Sufism because they have no regulation, no rules, no distinction between Hindu-Muslim — they just look straight into your heart and see your love for the auliyas, the noor of the Prophet.”
THE SURRENDER, too, has a complicated relationship with the music. “When you are in a creative field, particularly something like film or music,” says Rahman, “you can be tossed between highs and lows, good reviews and bad reviews. To maintain equilibrium, you have to detach yourself and abandon yourself merely to the service of music — look at it all from a different perspective. For this, the destruction of the ego is very important. At the same time, there are ironic counterpoints. If you don’t have an ego you can switch on and off, you cannot make music, you cannot do something extraordinary. You have to be committed to the idea of excelling the standards you have set yourself, fulfilling expectations. So, there is a good ego and a bad ego. Something like music also draws you away into another energy field — money, fame, women. For a long time, these impulses used to pull me in separate ways — the desire to renounce and the desire to achieve. You can never perfect these things, but finally now, I feel I am walking in sync, with both impulses hand-in-hand.”
Over the years, Rahman admits to many moments of stasis and saturation — phases when he felt enough is enough, he had done it all and would like to renounce the world. Each time, he laughs, something would come and uplift him, raise the scales. When Roja was offered to him, he was fed up with everything he had been doing: the jingles, the recordings for other music composers in Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil. “I revered Mani Ratnam and it was my dream to work with him. I thought this would be the last soundtrack I would make, so I just did what I pleased. I wanted to have fun. There were no walls in my head, no limitations. All the young people were listening to Western stuff those days, even me, so I thought, what’s the problem, are we not experimenting enough? And I let myself go.”
THE INSTANT and meteoric success brought its own counter stasis. “I thought, this is it,” says Rahman. “I have won the National film award, now I can just live off the earnings of my studio.” But then the excitements and challenge of the Hindi film industry came calling. Rangeela first; then a flood of other Hindi films. When the stasis of that threatened, there was the spike of Elizabeth, Bombay Dreams and Lord of the Ring. The western world came calling. By the time that threatened to pale, the KM Conservatory had been born, and Rahman’s Foundation Against Global Poverty — committed to eradicating poverty in India, Africa, and now, he chuckles, even America. “With all of this, I struggle less with the desire to renounce. I have found new meaning, a new sense of duty towards living, not only towards these projects, but to my wife and kids, and even my music. I see music now as being all about love, a service to humanity — it is about sharing joy with fellow human beings,” says he.
For many years, Rahman’s family — wife Saira Banu, daughters Kathija and Raheema, and son Rumi, were rarely seen publicly around him. “I plan to take them around with me much more now,” says he. “Be it in my studio, my tours abroad, or on my spiritual journeys. I don’t want them to feel separate. My father was such a huge influence because we were always around him. Without him, there would have been no music in our life.”
Typical of Rahman, his encounters with the western world too have yielded deeper things than success and awards. “After my first National Film Award, the Golden Globe has mattered the most to me because I wanted to bridge that vacuum — the fact that no Indian had won these international film and music awards. But as an individual, there is only so much of fame you can take in. Very quickly you detach yourself from it, you are only there as a representative of something else, not as an individual.”
What the forays into the western world have yielded for Rahman then is an expanded consciousness. “When I went to London first for Bombay Dreams, I was living isolated in this house, making music, meeting nobody. I used to pray five times a day and try to keep my fast. All around me were these pubs and drunk kids would piss under my window. Each time I went out, I would come back and bathe. But slowly I realised love can transcend all these segmental issues. You need to find a larger perspective which bridges all these worlds — west and east, Muslim and non-Muslim, or whatever else divides us.”
Bridges — that is an apt metaphor for Rahman and his music. In a jostling, frenetically commercial world — brimful of quick encomiums and sudden deaths — it has become difficult to gauge the true merit of things. Is Rahman the Mozart of our times? We may not be sure yet, but of this we can be certain: his music offers a way to bridge that huge void between the known and the great unknown from which earthly beauty stems.
A BLOCK AWAY from Rahman’s home, his new sense of “duty towards the living” is illumining a new generation. As the maestro was flying back across the continents with the globe — literally — in his hands, on the day of the Pongal holiday, you could have chanced on a handful of young boys and girls on the first floor of AM Studio. Students of Rahman’s dream project, the music school, KM Conservatory, they pored over their computers and music sheets. Occasionally, the strains of music wafted out from adjoining practice rooms. It would be difficult to find a more eclectic group: Anurag Sharma, 16, had given up on school and traveled with his mother (another keeper of prophecy?) all the way from Delhi to rent a room in Chennai for the opportunity of studying music in Rahman’s school. Ashrita Arockiam, a 23- year old post-graduate in English from Hyderabad, was straining to put together a scholarship to study music abroad, when the opportunity to do a similar course suddenly bloomed on home ground. Saurav Sen, 32, a computer engineer from Kolkata, gratefully gave up his job, and exchanged it for a year cocooned in music.
mix of foreign and Indian faculty, exposure to Western and Indian classical music, training in music technology, and a chance to workshop with many of the great musicians across the globe is only a part of the grooming the students from the Conservatory get. Three of the 40 chosen for the full-time foundational course — all of them had to audition before they were selected — are already apprenticing with Rahman. “We put together a concert every week,” says young Anurag, “whenever he is here, Rahman sir sits in on the session. It is amazing to be able to do that.”
But before the stasis of this can set in, a new scale is waiting for Rahman: the dream of creating India’s first symphonic orchestra. “We are a country of a billion people, bursting with talent,” says he, “why doesn’t India have a single orchestra?” KM could well be the womb for that. And in nurturing all of this with love, he might finally overcome the difficult opacity of his own teenage years.
