I intended to make this a sequel to my previous blog on Rahman’s Slumdog Millionaire awards because I couldn’t get enough time to work on putting together his best but then he has such a huge variety of beautiful compositions that I believe I won’t be able to put them on one blog ‘cos if I do, this will end up being my longest blog ever and you people reading it wont have the time or patience to make it through to the end of it.
The prolific Rahman’s biggest strength is his versatility – his ability to fathom the complete range of musical genres. We can possibly categorize his best into 5 broad groups – the romantic musical, the rhythm oriented, the soft instrumental, the spiritual and then there are the others that traverse various groups. This is intended to be the first installment to my homage to Rahman’s musical magic and will focus on his mellifluous romantic songs.
Rahman made his debut in music composition for mainstream movies with Roja (1992)and so it is only befitting that I start the discussion with the song that I like the most from this movie. Although the title song was more popular, the complexity of the orchestra makes this my personal favorite. Moreover, like with most of his songs, there is a lot of variance of scales and pitches in the same song making it interesting to listen to.
Yeh Haseen Vadiyan – Roja
Although I am not going chronologically, his 2nd movie Thiruda Thiruda’s (1993)exceptional music forces me to put this lesser known song in the hindi belt next in my list. This hindi version from the dubbed movie Chor Chor (which never made it to the big leagues) brings in orchestra and choir to the forefront. When I had first heard the Tamil version of this song, even if I didn’t understand a word, the music spelt of happiness and glee and put me on 7th Heaven. For some reason, the hindi version loses a bit of its magic because of the lyrics yet you can feel the sprinkle of magic.
Jhoom Jhoom Naache Hum – Chor Chor (Thiruda Thiruda)
My next one is also from a lesser known movie called Duniya Dilwalon Ki (1996) and is an even lesser heard song. It is beautifully rendered in the voice of Sonu Nigam and mostly just uses a piano in the background which makes it so very simple yet lovable.
Jaa Re Jaa – Duniya Dilwalon Ki
Rahman knows his instruments – all he needs is three of them – a drum or octapad, a piano or a synthesizer and a guitar and the music that he will craft will still be so complete that you won’t find anything lacking. Sometimes he tends to give one instrument a bit of extra leverage and manages to weave magic. Here’s another of my personal favorites from the movie Thaksak (1999) where the guitar takes away all the accolades and of course Roop Kumar Rathod’s amazing vocals compliments it equally.
Khamosh Raat - Thaksak
How could I talk about Rehman’s romantic numbers and not mention – “Ae Ajnabi” from Dil Se (1998)? Most people who have followed Udit Narayan’s songs will probably count this one as his best to date. Again, notice the weightage given to one instrument – the “Dhapli” for rhythms – making it so very prominent and giving the desired pace to the otherwise slow number. Mahalxmi Iyer’s background vocals also gel in nicely into the canvas.
Ae Ajnabi – Dil Se
Since we are still in the yesteryears, I think I should throw in another of his magical romantic numbers from the movie Sapnay (1997) beautifully rendered by Hariharan and Sadhana Sargam bringing back visuals of the romantic ballad under moonlit sky.
Chanda Re – Sapnay
…many more to go but too little time to spare; I will continue my take on Rahman’s beautiful romantic numbers in my next blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment