Don't you find Rahman's music repititive?

Do you? Well if you do, you're not listening to his music properly. How come you don't find remixes repititive, or stale. How is it that the same old bhangra beats of the Salaam Namastes and the Duses of Bollywood don't bore you out of your mind? Haven't you had enough of that same old pop-bhangra sound? Remixes are by far one of the most boring pieces of music I have encountered in recent times. With the exception of Instant Karma ( who sometimes make the original sound less robust), I don't care too much for remixed music. What I do see are scantily clad women with paw marks (which in itself is not original) on body parts, and butt-squeezing, that lil kids in India are watching even though it should not be allowed. I wonder how the censor board doesn't catch this stuff, but comes down hard on Shekhar Kapur?

Sure, you can tell that it's an ARR number almost right off. That's due to his style. I mean, I can tell it's a Nickelback, or a Nirvana song as soon as I hear the opening notes. Does that mean that they're repititive? Everybody has a certain style. ARR has a very distinctive one, and his music has so much variety. Okay, the reason he himself gave to his sounding 'repititive' was that he'd been doing so many period films off late. Well lets take a look at them period movies. Besides the fact that they were all productions in Hindi following the wildly successful period-pioneer: Lagaan, I don't see anything similar in their music. Also Meenaxi was completely written off. I had to look up the internet to even find out when it was released. I also listened to Chinnamma Chilakkamma because ARR obviously thinks( and I wholeheartedly agree) that the song is good enough to play in his live concerts. Reena Bharadwaj in Yeh Rishta was...I can't think of any other word it, stupendous. The sheer beauty of that song....leaves me 'word'less. I loved the Bicycle Song too.

I digress..I'm really good at that!

The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey (2005) ... aka Mangal Pandey (India: Hindi title)
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero (2005)
Kisna: The Warrior Poet (2005)

I think the above stated movies released in quick succession within the same year, have led to this misconception that ARR is getting stale. To begin with, he only did a couple of songs and three instrumentals in Kisna. Both the songs were beautiful in themselves. The piano-flute duet had me wanting to look up the internet for it's sheet music. The best part, is that I don't have a clue how to read the notes and make any sense of it. But I want to learn how to play that piece. And come hell or high water, I'm going to learn it. Incidently, I saw a really bad quality version of the movie, devoid of any of the songs, and thought that the movie stank up to high heaven. Well, after Company, lets just say Oberoi's ratings slipped after I saw that one. I don't think he did a great job in Saathiya or Yuva. He hasn't got what it takes I guess. Just not a Maddy. Oh wait, not a Maddy in Alaipayuthe. Didn't really like him in anything else since. Siddharth did a much better job than Oberoi did in AE.

Before I go on to extol Ghai's work ( being sarcastic here), Bose's music was wonderful. I didn't see any similarities between any of his songs and any others in Mangal Pandey or Kisna. From his Aazaadi, to all the instrumentals and the Des ki mittis. I thought it was very novel. I' m just waiting for when I make my annual visit back home so I can buy the CD. Even to my partially untrained ears, they seems to stand out. Mangal Pandey...now come on! None of the songs in this movie are even vaguely similar to any of the songs in the aforementioned movies!

I don't know if other people feel the same way, but I've always found that some of ARR's music does not appeal to me the first time I listen to it. Examples? Believe me or not, I didn't like Chaiyya Chaiyya when I first heard it. Thanks to the Ethi van driver, I was addicted to it soon enough. Anbe Aaruyire didn't strike me as great until I listened to it for the 3rd or 4th time and then...I was hooked, and still am. There are plenty more of these.

He's coming to the USA early next year. I'm hoping and praying that he comes down to Houston too. It would be great to listen to him live. I was in Chennai when he had his concert there, but given that it was at night and I wasn't going to get the permission to go, I never even tried. I was of course glued to the telly when they aired it.

There are some other people out there who don't consider him to be as great as others. The title of this blog is 'True Blue Rahmanaic'. It's obvious from the very title that it's going to primarily consist of my feelings about ARR. If I felt that someone else was great, I'd have named it accordingly. Attempting to convince me of someone else being better when he/she has blatently lifted tunes just won't wash with me. You may be a music pundit and I won't accept it. I be that way.