When AR Rahman received his Oscars last Sunday for "Jai Ho" and his score for Slumdog Millionaire, I suppose millions of Indians around the world felt proud of him, and proud that the music loved by them for the past 17 years could finally be known and enjoyed by the rest of the world.
For many in and around my generation, we've followed his music from his earliest days. It was unusually refreshing. It was a departure from the tunes of the Maestro Ilayaraaja who I feel tended to excel at the folk tunes and evergreens. I suppose ARR gave a blend of folk and "Western" through his whole-hearted tunes. It was whole-hearted because it really felt whole-hearted. That I guess, was what made him stand out. Today, the younger music composers in the South try very hard, but somehow, they still don't cut it (although some songs are gems).
So to see AR win the Oscars felt like a redemption of sorts to the rest of the world- a "We've been talking about him for ages but finally you get to hear about him" thing from the Indian diaspora. I think this watershed event brought every ARR fan together, Indian and non-Indian, and especially Tamil-speaking folks when he spoke in Tamil at the awards and made me do a double-take.
Is it overhype for ARR? I don't think so - its totally deserved. You should have watched the Tamil news where ARR was totally swamped at the Chennai airport and outside his house (he was even shown telling the fans to go home as his children would need to go to school!). And in any case, the hype will die down in two or three more days. But the magic of the moments will live on.
The movie which got him the opportunity is also a extraordinary piece of work. The core of the story, conceived by Indian author Vikas Swarup as the novel "Q & A", was translated brilliantly into a film version as interpreted by Danny Boyle et al. into Slumdog Millionaire. The Indian film industry was divided into haters and lovers of the movie, but arguably more lovers - the distrurbing portrayal of the "underbelly" of Mumbai was felt and praised by a great many. I felt that the movie lived up to its amazing hype.
In the Slumdog "painting", the main artist was a foreigner (the producer, director, DOP), but a fair number of the crew was Indian. Very importantly, the "subjects" were all Indian, who believed in the merit of the movie and gave it their very best. To say that the movie "exploited" the poverty of India is to deny and run away from reality that India does have that underbelly to it.
At the end of the day, the Indian film industry has won massive fans around the world, despite the fact that most of the world sees India as "Bollywood" - something I personally find a shocking example of the colonial exoticising of the Other in contemporary times - oversimplifying a diverse and complex culture with a simple and blanket term like "Bollywood".
Just yesterday I ran to buy AR's Delhi-6 and Jaane Tu - more about those in the coming posts!
For many in and around my generation, we've followed his music from his earliest days. It was unusually refreshing. It was a departure from the tunes of the Maestro Ilayaraaja who I feel tended to excel at the folk tunes and evergreens. I suppose ARR gave a blend of folk and "Western" through his whole-hearted tunes. It was whole-hearted because it really felt whole-hearted. That I guess, was what made him stand out. Today, the younger music composers in the South try very hard, but somehow, they still don't cut it (although some songs are gems).
So to see AR win the Oscars felt like a redemption of sorts to the rest of the world- a "We've been talking about him for ages but finally you get to hear about him" thing from the Indian diaspora. I think this watershed event brought every ARR fan together, Indian and non-Indian, and especially Tamil-speaking folks when he spoke in Tamil at the awards and made me do a double-take.
Is it overhype for ARR? I don't think so - its totally deserved. You should have watched the Tamil news where ARR was totally swamped at the Chennai airport and outside his house (he was even shown telling the fans to go home as his children would need to go to school!). And in any case, the hype will die down in two or three more days. But the magic of the moments will live on.
The movie which got him the opportunity is also a extraordinary piece of work. The core of the story, conceived by Indian author Vikas Swarup as the novel "Q & A", was translated brilliantly into a film version as interpreted by Danny Boyle et al. into Slumdog Millionaire. The Indian film industry was divided into haters and lovers of the movie, but arguably more lovers - the distrurbing portrayal of the "underbelly" of Mumbai was felt and praised by a great many. I felt that the movie lived up to its amazing hype.
In the Slumdog "painting", the main artist was a foreigner (the producer, director, DOP), but a fair number of the crew was Indian. Very importantly, the "subjects" were all Indian, who believed in the merit of the movie and gave it their very best. To say that the movie "exploited" the poverty of India is to deny and run away from reality that India does have that underbelly to it.
At the end of the day, the Indian film industry has won massive fans around the world, despite the fact that most of the world sees India as "Bollywood" - something I personally find a shocking example of the colonial exoticising of the Other in contemporary times - oversimplifying a diverse and complex culture with a simple and blanket term like "Bollywood".
Just yesterday I ran to buy AR's Delhi-6 and Jaane Tu - more about those in the coming posts!
No comments:
Post a Comment