Soft-spoken gentleman composer that he is, they could get king’s treatment.īut once the mixing is over and all the orchestration has been added, and the song comes out of the studio with all the different tracks put in one place, you would know that whoever is king, Rahman is the emperor. Not that he is going to bust the lyric writer or the singer. Rahman understood it long before and that is why he is India’s topmost pop musician.Ī single track of his may sell for crores…Can he afford to let a lyric writer carry the trophy home or a singer to chime to a million hearts if he, Rahman has to earn and keep the millions? Well, Rahman is a brand and no problem if Karnad doesn’t understand it, A.
Karnad has been in a plainspeaking mode for some time, and after cutting Tagore to size on his plays he has set about putting Rahman in his place for stymieing the lyrical force of his songs.īut to fault Rahman for not being a Madan Mohan or a Naushad and not making romantic poetry leap through to the listener, or even not allowing a Rafi or a Lata to top the chart with ecstatic vocals is not to understand Rahman. Rahman’s music is overpowering but it also overpowers, well nigh obscures and even eclipses the lyric, has been his evaluation. Rahman, the double Oscar winning phenomenon with qualified praise (a different take on faint praise, I suppose).
