In college, we were a bunch of crazy Ilayaraja fans. Even if we heard a good song from some other music director, we would only half-heartedly accept the truth. We would try to find some Ilayaraja song that resembled the new song so that we could say it was influenced by Ilayaraja's song! We were fanatics!
Unfortunately for us, it was around this time, Ilayaraja's scores were becoming more and more clicheed! Some times, the copycats were more innovative and creative in copying Ilayaraja's songs than Ilayaraja himself! And Ilayaraja's most favorite female singer Janaki's deteriorating voice was adding to the woes! Obviously, the maestro was bored with cinema music and was concentrating on bigger things; his project with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was happening.
That's exactly when Rehman entered Tamil cinema by storm. I was told, that was how Ilayaraja took Tamil cinema by storm with his all new scores some thirty years ago! History repeated itself. Rehman's Roja was new and refreshingly fresh!
Now back to my friend's call and why he was so pained! He was the most fanatic of the Ilayaraja's fans in our group. We, at last, realized that Ilayaraja was not going to be mainstream anymore. A replacement is here and he is very young. We knowingly fooled ourselves by calling
Rehman a one time hit; he is just a sound engineer; he can only work with digitized computer music. He proved us wrong again and again with his successive movies. Of course Ilayaraja gave us wonderful scores after that too but then he was not mainstream anymore as we suspected.
What we did not foresee then was, what a tremendous force Rehman would become in Hindi cinema field. A lot of things that changed around the world and India had helped Rehman further. To name a few: Tamil directors such as Manirathnam and Shankar had become popular and highly respected figures at the national level; they had given the much needed entry for Rehman to Hindi cinema; Indian economy opened up; foreign interest in India and anything that is Indian had increased; gen-next listened to western music and expected similar scores locally; Hindi and Tamil movies were released worldwide. Many things that were not available to Ilayaraja were available to Rehman. Things have changed forever. Since then there was no looking back for Rehman. It has today culminated in the Golden Globe award for Rehman for Original score in the movie Slumdog Millionaire.
What an achievement! Wish you all the best and 'Oscar' Rehman!
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2 comments:
And what a sellout! Won't forgive you that. Damn Sundar- just because one Indian won an Oscar for the wrong reasons? That the novelty of the fusion of Western and Indian music (paradesi Rahman music) appealed enough. Do you really listen to any Rahman CD past the season in which it was released? Even pop music wins its share of music, but then not all pop is a transient sign of the times, dead, forgotten or an embarassment to those who grew up with it.
Hey anyways, belated anniversary wishes and advance b'day wishes! Savour the last year of the thirties old man. The mid life crisis is about to begin.
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