A word should be said about the A.R. Rahman factor. Mani Ratnam may
be the most accomplished commercial Indian director of his
generation, but he pales in some ways against his favored musical
director, who has become a much bigger name. Working sometimes with
Ratnam and sometimes on his own, A.R. Rahman has completely
transformed Indian popular music with a long string of distinctive
pop hits, including "Chaiya Chaiya," "Taal," and "Rang De," to name
just three. The sound of Rahman's songs from Dil Se and Taal have
been widely copied; the Rahman sound is quickly becoming the Indian
industry standard. If nothing else, Rahman is to be appreciated for
obliterating the annoying overuse of reverb effects in Hindi film-
song vocals (that piercing sound that destroys Lata Mangeshkar's
voice in so many old Hindi songs), as well as modernizing
orchestration -- dance beats and electric guitars instead of
violins. While Rahman has put together a stunning list of pop hits
in Hindi as well as Tamil, his musical signature has also helped to
create a neo-classical movement that stresses traditional folk
melodies and rhythms from different parts of India, which were
absent throughout the golden years of Hindi film music.
Rahman's music in Peck on the Cheek is always satisfying and
frequently brilliant -- especially the use of Portuguese-inflected
music that appropriately begins to surface once the family (parents
and adopted child) enter Sri Lanka. The caucasian component of the
mixed-audience at the Ritz East in Philadelphia gasped in surprise
at the musical hybridity in the sequence where Amudha and her family
make their way from Colombo to Jaffna by car. I was gasping, more
quietly perhaps, to be seeing images of Jaffna at all in a
mainstream (if Tamil) Indian film.
read the entire article at
http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/peck%20on%20the%20cheek.htm
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