Tag Archives: India

A.R. Rahman – The Spirit Of Music – Book Review

Conversations, Not Biography

“The Spirit of Music” sets the readers’ expectation right on the cover by declaring “Conversations with Nasreen Munni Kabir”. Unfortunately, a lot of people have been referring to it as ARR’s biography. It is not. It is just a very long interview. It makes for a light and entertaining read but it is constrained by two things – a) ARR’s ability to communicate with words (not nearly as good as his ability to communicate with music), b) His willingness to share information.

Nevertheless, the book is a great read because Ms. Kabir does manage to get ARR to open up like never before. There are some very personal insights that could have come only directly from ARR. Examples:

  • When ARR hits a composer’s block, he writes tunes to Bulleh Shah’s and Amir Khusrau’s poetry. Guru’s “Ae Hairathe Ashiqui” was composed on Amir Khusrau’s “Ae sharbat-e ashiqui”
  • He deals with pressure at work by heading out of Chennai to visit a Sufi dargah near Mahabalipuram

ARR’s Struggles

The one thing that struck me the most in the book is the description of the years of struggle ARR went through. His rise after “Roja” may have been meteoric but here is what his career looked like before it:

  • 1978 – 1979 – Started working as a roadie when he was 11 years.
  • 1980 – Played keyboards on Doordarshan program, Wonder Balloon
  • 1981 – Played in school band
  • 1985 – 1986 – Played in band, Magic. They had two gigs. To quote ARR – “And that was it – finito.”
  • 1987 – Composed Album called “Disco Disco” for Malaysia Vasudevan
  • 1988 – Played in band, Roots. Gave one performance.
  • 1989 – Setup Panchathan Studio, a recording studio, in the backyard of his house. His mother had to sell her jewellery to finance the studio.
  • 1979 – 1989 – Sessions musician. Played keyboard for Illayaraja, Raj-Koti, Vijay Anand
  • 1990 – Released English-language album called “Set Me Free” with Malgudi Shubha
  • 1989 – 1991 – Composed ad jingles.
  • 1990 – 1991 – Played in band, Nemesis Avenue. Played one gig.
  • 1992 – Played keyboard on Zakir Hussain and Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan’s album “Colours”. Credited as Dileep.

Sure ARR has loads of talent but even he had to work his ass off (and meet the 10,000-hour rule somewhere along the way) to achieve success.

Nice Guy

ARR has endeared himself to his fans not just because of his music but also because he comes across as a nice guy – humble, honest and spiritual. This comes across several times throughout the book. My favorites:

  • The first page of the book has this written in Tamil script – “Ella pukazhum iraivanukke” meaning “All praises to God”. He used this phrase while accepting the Oscar Awards for Slumdog Millionnaire
  • This Q&A

NMK: What do people say about your voice?

ARR: What do people say about my voice? It sounds like me of course. [laughs] I suppose they find character in the voice.

Collector’s Item

The book also happens to pretty cool collector’s item with the score sheet for “The Bombay Theme” and a CD of Rahman compositions that you will not find anywhere else.

Verdict

A good read for any music lover and a must-buy for ARR fans.

 

 

Why Streaming Music Is Not The Same As Owning It

An acquaintance of mine asked me why anyone would ever buy music when there are multiple on-demand streaming services available in India for free. I can answer the question from my perspective:

  1. Quality – I am yet to see any form of streamed music that matches the quality of CD music. In India, internet service (whether it is broadband, Edge, 3G, or any other variety) is erratic and/or slow. Even in the West, where these problems don’t exist, streamed music is nowhere close to CD quality. I may sound like an old-timer but when I am home, I use my CDs when I can instead of plugging my iPod to the home theater. The difference is mind-blowing. And for people who plonk a good deal of money on a home theater, it makes sense to spend on CDs to get the most out of their investment. In fact, when I rip my CDs, I use the AAC encoder instead of MP3. Although AAC files take more space, the sound quality is a lot better. When storage becomes cheaper and more compact, I know I will be re-ripping all my CDs in WAV format. Forget about CD quality, I also haven’t heard streamed music that matches the quality of the 256 kpbs songs that are available on iTunes.
  2. Physical Ownership – I like arranging (and re-arranging) my CD rack. I like showing off my collection to people! I enjoy reading CD inserts. I also enjoy spending time on my digital collection. I constantly update ID3 tags. I like the fact that the songs I have on my device songs have special meaning for me unlike everything else that exists on the cloud. They are a manageable subset that I listen to more frequently than everything else.
  3. Everything in one place – This is specially relevant for Indians who tend to have eclectic tastes. There is no single streaming website that can sate my interests – rock, pop, jazz, Bollywood, Koliwood, Mollywood, Carnatic, Hindustani, Bhajans and some really obscure, independent stuff. One of my all-time favorite albums is a fusion instrumental album called Conversations by L Subramaniam – not available on any streaming service. I don’t want to go to different places to listen to different music.
  4. Independence – I don’t like being dependent on things I don’t have control on – availability of internet, internet provider reliability, the streaming company (its financials, its agreements with the labels, etc.) – to be able to listen to music.

Which doesn’t mean I don’t use streamed music. I do. I use it to discover new music and to try something new before I buy it. Nobody can deny these differences but I understand that there are many who are willing to overlook them for one thing – streamed music is free.

To each their own.

Music Wants To Be Free

Pirates (distributors and consumers) often invoke Stewart Brands’ iconic phrase “Information wants to be free” to justify piracy. In a recent discussion with a friend, I argued that Brand used this powerful phrase to suggest that information should be easily available to everybody, not that it should be available free of cost. My friend’s counter-argument was that in India’s context, availability was truly an issue. He told me about how he ended up buying a pirated DVD because the original was not available. He did buy the official DVD when it was eventually released but it was evident that he didn’t really feel obliged to.

While I advocate purchase of legal music, I am unable to find fault with people who are driven to pirated goods in cases like this. I can totally relate with them.

  1. Some time ago I wrote about being unable to get hold of Raghu Dixit’s album. I haven’t listened to his music since then – poor quality internet streams are not my cup of tea.
  2. I ended up buying the music for the Tamil movie, Vinnathaandi Varuvaya, on the iTunes US store, because it was neither available in any physical store in Bangalore (I tried three different ones), nor in any internet store (I tried about a dozen). What was even more shocking? The music label that has the rights, Sony Music, does not even have an India site. Really Sony?! Is that how important the India market is to you? Because of your supply issues, I ended up paying for this album double of what it should have cost me in India. This for an album that had to be one of your bestsellers in 2010.

I know there are other people (like this) who jump through hoops to get legal music.

Music companies – get your act together. Stop whining about piracy and start making your content easily available to paying customers:

  1. Improve your supply of CDs as well as digital music. Even the pirates are doing better than you.
  2. Leverage the long tail. Stop focusing on only the ‘big hits’. The cost of digitizing and distributing music is incremental. Make everything available for download, even, scratch that, specially, the non-hits.
  3. Do a Hulu. Join together and make it easier for people to buy digital music. Google India has done a great job of aggregating streamed music. You can do the same for downloadable music. Don’t make us hop through all your websites to find music.
  4. Develop an India-specific distribution strategy with variable pricing. Don’t forget the bottom of the pyramid. Flood the market with the music equivalent of shampoo sachets – low bit-rate music on pen drives or phone chips. Peg it at a price point that makes downloading/distributing pirated music not worth the hassle.

Make “Music wants to be free” your motto. Or, watch musicians and movie producers bypass you and start self-publishing as you become irrelevant. Worse, watch pirates destroy your industry.

5 Songs For Women (And An Update)

God made man first, and decided he could do better. Here are my top 5 songs dedicated to the women in my life:

  1. Kabhi Kabhi (Mukesh)
  2. Nee Kaatru, Naan Maram (Hariharan)
  3. Amma Endru (Yesudas)
  4. Phoolon Ka Taaron Ka (Kishore Kumar)
  5. Daughters (John Mayer)

What’s your favorite song about women?

A cool announcement on Women’s Day – our first lady employee – Madhuri – joined yesterday. Check out her profile on our team page.

The Fascination For High-Pitched Vocals

There is an awesome thread in RMIM in which a few people have asserted that music directors did a disservice to Lata and music lovers by making her sing at a pitch higher than what was necessary or pleasing. Just because she could. One guy actually edited a song and tweaked it to a pitch which was 1/2 a note lower. To my ears, the version with the lower pitch is far more pleasing. I have felt this not only about Lata but also others like Chitra, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Shankar Mahadevan and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Glad to see there are others who feel the same.

I have nothing against high-pitched vocals per se. They convey strong emotions of angst and passion – O Duniya Ke Rakhwale (Baiju Bawra) is a great example. My only problem is with music directors overdoing it just because they have a singer who can carry it off (and sometimes even with singers who can’t). When overdone, such vocals can sound contrived, jarring and downright unpleasant. This fascination for high-pitched vocals also ends up typecasting and underutilizing talented singers.

I attended a couple of Anup Jalota concerts when I was a kid. One of the common features of these concerts was Jalota sahab letting out a taan and not taking a breath till the audience clapped. I don’t think people clapped because they enjoyed the taan. I think they clapped because they were kind and they knew that while Jalota sahab did have a tremendous lungs, not clapping could result in a medical emergency. In a way, these long taans were not really meant for the audience, they were meant for Anup Jalota to feel good about himself. Overdone high-pitched vocals are something like that.

Check out these clips from an RMIM member:

Actually, since two people liked the reduced pitch version, I thought I will upload a third version where we simply reduced the playback speed of the DVD by 5% and recorded the audio. So this third clip is slightly longer duration (1:53 instead of 1:48) and the reduction is pitch is due to slower play back. I liked the pitch reduction without slowing down the speed better. Your preference may be different and I am fine with it. So here are the three links again –

Original from DVD – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koDVVdUcUfo

Half note lower version without speed reduction – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvlbpweaEwU

Lower pitch due to speed reduction (DVD play back at 95% of normal speed) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFSSyFeB-xk

Enjoy!!

What is your take? Which clip do you like?

Solar Punch – NY based Eco-Rock Band Live in Bangalore

I’m writing this post about the band Solar Punch just because I loved their attempt of rendering Yun Hi Chala from Swades.

Solar Punch is a solar-powered band that uses music to educate people about the environment and climate change. Their sound system is powered by a small PV array mounted atop band mate Alan Bigelow’s car. They charge batteries and use an inverter to convert the DC from the panels to AC for the P.A. and devices. They draw inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s quote – ‘Be the change you want the world to become.’

Happy news is that they are performing live in Bangalore today as per this article.

If time permits I would love to go get a Solar Punch!!! Check out their performance of Yun Hi Chala:

Objective Fans – An Oxymoron

In the last couple of days, our blog got a nice spike in traffic. A quick peek at Google Analytics showed that most of the new hits were for a recent post regarding A.R. Rahman. Almost all the hits for this post came from a Yahoo Group and good ol’ Google helped me figure out that this group belonged to an A.R. Rahman fan club. One of the members of this group (Thanks Rivjot!) had apparently shared the link to this post with this group.

The post elicited the following exchange in the Yahoo group:

Thanks, Rivjot for this. I agree with him

To me, if we agree with the writer then it would mean AR hasn’t given music in 2010 which is not as good as his music before 2009 but that is not the case here. 2010 was really a good year with varied genres of music by AR.

My agreement with him is about ARR’s popularity being down up North in 2010, not his quality of work.  Whether ARR’s music in 2010 was as good, better or worse than previous years is a subjective take.  I think his quality has not suffered at all, just his popularity.

I don’t agree with the author’s assesmen of 2010…he clearly hasn’t heard VTV or Endhiran (Robot doesn’t count as its dubbed..both albums were popular and were of spellbinding quality..also how can people overlook 127 Hours??…if it were some other Indian composer they’d act like it was the moon landing!

My response:

  1. I have heard both VTV and Endhiran songs (in fact, my son is a huge fan of Endhiran songs). VTV is very good but I didn’t enjoy Endhiran. I have also heard the soundtrack for 127 Hours and watched the movie as well. As I wrote in an earlier post, I liked the score for 127 Hours but I liked The Social Network more. I still think his work in 2010 as a whole does not match up to his earlier work.
  2. A.R. Rahman is probably the only Indian composer with a truly Indian identity, if not global (as opposed to a state or industry or language identity). When it comes to him, I don’t think there is a North-South divide just because he happens to be from the South. If there is a North-South difference of opinion, it’s because of the inaccessibility of some of his music due to its language (I did make this point in the post that triggered this debate).
  3. Of course, my views are subjective. So are the opinions of the fans above. Becoming a fan is not just about the quality of music (although that plays a big part), it is also about some very personal associations we make with songs and artists. Those personal associations are different for each one of us and make it very difficult for us to be rational and objective while discussing our favorite music or artist. And there is nothing wrong with subjectivity in this context. The world would be so boring if everyone liked the same music.

People – Please Get Off A.R. Rahman’s Back

For some reason, a Facebook status update from me about 127 Hours elicited some negative comments against A.R. Rahman. This is not the first time I have heard such comments. I am intrigued by generalizations that A.R. Rahman is overrated. Why would people say something like that despite the brilliant work he has produced over almost two decades? What else does the guy have to do to prove his greatness? Here are some factors that may be leading people to make these assertions:

  • Rahman is competing with himself. He is being judged against his own extremely high standards. Is it fair to expect him to keep churning out masterpieces like Roja, Rangeela or Rang De Basanti all the time?
  • Recency effect. 2009 was not his most prolific year (probably because of the ruckus following Slumdog Millionaire) and 2010 was not his best year. My sense is that people are assessing a career spanning 20 years based on output from 2 years.
  • We are always catching up with Rahman. It is not unusual for people to say that they start liking Rahman songs after they have heard it a few times. In my opinion, it’s because he experiments and creates new sounds that we are not used to. His music forces us to open up our minds and broaden the scope of what we have traditionally defined as music. Remember – entire generations of Indians ignored Kishore Kumar for two decades because he sounded so different. His found broad acceptance only with Aradhana (1969) more than 20 years after his first song.
  • Not all his music is accessible to everybody. He has created gems for Tamil movies that are not accessible to non-Tamil music lovers (Pudhiya Mugam, Rhythm, etc) and vice versa (Rangeela, Swades, Rang De Basanti, etc.). How can people assess his work in its entirety when they haven’t listened to everything he has composed?

My take:

  • Rahman is not overrated. However, some of his lesser work (like Jai Ho) does tend to ride on his fame.
  • Rahman is an epoch-making composer. No music director has had the kind of broad impact that he has over the last two decades. He starts trends and continuously pushes musical boundaries. Many, many years from now, people will talk not just about his compositions, but about his positive influence on the Indian music scene as a whole. We are lucky to be living in Rahman’s era.
  • Yes, he is not perfect. A couple of minor grouses, I myself have – a) He uses his voice far more than he needs to or has in the past. b) Has he been playing a tad safe of late? He is no longer introducing as many new voices as he has in the past.

Some of this anti-Rahman buzz reminds me of what Sachin Tendulkar went through a few years ago, when many were gunning for his head. I am comforted by this parallel because I know that Rahman will do exactly what Sachin has done since then – continue to build upon a magnificent body of work that will seal his place as an all-time great, work that will win over all doubters – for good.

Coke Studio In India?! Fingers Crossed

Anyone who has seen the delectable live show program from across the border will understand why I am so excited about the news that Coke Studio may come to India! Like most Indians, I have many misgivings about Pakistan and it’s attitude towards India but I can’t help admiring, even envying, their music scene. What do I like about Pakistani music, specifically Coke Studio?

  1. They have figured out a way of packaging local, folk music with western, modern music in a very pleasing manner. Purists may frown upon this approach but I think it makes folk music a lot more accessible and appealing to the younger crowd.
  2. A lot of music is produced for its own sake and not as a prop in a movie. Now that may be because the Pakistani movie industry sucks but in my opinion, this focus on music produces very good results.
  3. Live music always feels better. It has an element of magic that is somehow lost in the recording. Live music has a lot of engagement going on – amongst the artists, between the artist and the audience and within the audience – which make it a very personal experience unique to each individual in the audience. Finally, live music provides the artist freedom to improvise. If you have seen Hariharan or Shankar Mahadevan on stage, you’ll know how much fun that can be.

My only hope is that the Indian version remains true to the original format (live, non-mainstream music). Check out one of my favorite Coke Studio performances and you’ll know what I am talking about.

PS: Check out something one of the commenters on Youtube pointed out. See how Zeb and the drummer smile when the chorus kicks in at 1:45 and tell me if you don’t feel like smiling with them! That’s the edge of live performance!

Raghu Dixit’s Folk-Bhaavageethe-Rock Fusion

The recent trend of stylising Bhaavageethe with contemporary music is becoming very popular. A great and effective contributor to this style is none other than Raghu Dixit, who has significantly recreated most of the Sant Shishunal Sharif’s songs.

This new genre is well-received and asking- for-more kind of stuff.

Bhaavageethe – ‘Songs with Emotion’ (Bhaava – emotions, geethe – song). A form of Sugam Sangeeth, Semi-Classical, with influences of folk. Bhavageethe relies heavily on words & soft musical score. This music form is popular in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Most of the poetry sung in this genre pertains to subjects like love, nature, philosophy, etc.

Listen and enjoy to some of Raghu’s musical treat –

Gudgudiya Sedi Nodo

Soruthihudu Maniya Malilgi