Rahman Scores
Slumdog is not a B'wood musical. So it's unfair to expect sizzling pop hits
from Rahman. ...
Ajith Pillai
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Commercial cinema in India also doubles up as MTV. For decades, it has served
as a platform to
showcase pop music. Which is perhaps why a film score is judged by the number
of hit songs a
music director spins out in the course of a film. Very often the tracksusually
upbeat/
downbeat love songs with a catchy or heart-rending hookare released before the
completion of a
film. The success of the soundtrack often determines the box-office prospects
of the film.
Given this backdrop, it's understandable why many are surprised at the
accolades being showered
on A.R.
Slumdog is not a B'wood musical. So it's unfair to expect sizzling pop
hits from Rahman.
Rahman for the music of Slumdog Millionaire. Hasn't he given us better
hits in Kadalan or
Jodhaa Akbar is the common refrain. Perhaps he has. But chart-topping ditties
alone do not make
a good film score. The music has to be seen in totality with the film.
Does it embellish and thread the storyline? Is it in sync with the overall
theme?
A film score (background music as opposed to songs forming the soundtrack) is
meant to convey
the period and place in which the story is set. Crucially, it's supposed to
reflect the range
of emotions and energy that the filmmaker wishes to convey on screen. Rahman
has delivered on
all these counts, which is why director Danny Boyle has given him full marks
for the music. And
this praise came much before the Golden Globe and other awards.
The music for Boyle's film works because it dovetails well with the narrative
structure and
characters. The fusion of western and Indian classical with folk, European
house and hip hop
has produced an unobtrusive yet dynamic and contemporary synthesis which has an
international
resonance. Very clearly, he has worked in close conjunction with Boyle who has
ensured at the
edit table that the music is put to good usenever overstated.
Slumdog's score has been well thought out note for note. The approach is
different from that of
Bollywood music directors who wash their hands of a film once they've composed
the hits. The
rest of the score is left to minions or outsourced from musicians who run home
studios and are
desperate for work. With the music director not directly involved, the final
cut ends up having
cliched passages of sound put together with orchestral samples.
Boyle has used only snatches of the songsthe only full-length track (Jai Ho)
comes when the
credits roll out at the end. Would Rahman have done better if he had imposed a
clutch of hits
on the film? And would the director have allowed his film to be messed up with
one song after
the other? Given the tightness of the plot, there was obviously no space to
stop the story in
its tracks and cut from the slums of Mumbai to the tulip fields outside
Amsterdam for an S&D
sequence. In fact, if Boyle had used this Bollywood formula, the film would
have run the risk
of becoming long-drawn and soporific.
Slumdog Millionaire is not a musical in the Bollywood tradition. So it would be
unfair to
expect sizzling pop hits from Rahman. That was not his brief. The fact that Jai
Ho has become a
hit is incidental. When Paul McCartney was asked to score for The Family Way in
the '60s he
went into the studios and produced orchestral and choral music without a single
pop vocal
track. He didn't think the film required it. Incidentally, no one compared his
work with what
he had done for the Beatles.
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