Word: bombay
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...enlightenment struck again. I saw - heard, rather - the West End show Bombay Dreams. Like Chess, it had music by a composer who had written (and sometimes performed) dozens of pop hits. Indeed, A.R. Rahman is not just India's most prominent movie songwriter - in a land of a billion people where movie music truly is popular music - but, by some computations, the best-selling recording artist in history. His scores have sold more albums than Elvis or the Beatles or all the Jacksons: perhaps 150 million, maybe more...
...Rahman explained it to TIME's Lina Lofaro for a story we did last April when Bombay Dreams opened on Broadway, "If you have one big hit in India, it will sell more than 5 or 6 million. I've done over 70 movies in which more than 20, 25 were really big hits. And the rest of them are musical hits. The soundtracks sell very well. It's a calculation of all that stuff. Each film I do is in three different languages. Tamil soundtracks sell probably half a million, Telegu sells probably 1 million, Hindi is like more...
...told Lina, "Indian film music was very segmented. This made me take a film song and produce it in such a way that it would go beyond language or culture. That worked because, basically, I'm from South India [the Tamil capital of Madras]. It worked across North India [Bombay, Calcutta, New Delhi, etc.], which is a completely different culture. And the same formula worked with the London audience" for Bombay Dreams...
...Again I wrote about the music that has captured and transported me; I said that "anyone with half an ear will hear the most vibrant, varied new score in ages. Audiences will walk out of Bombay Dreams humming Rahman's songs and singing his praises. If music is the crucial part of a musical, then Rahman's genius will ensure that Bollywood conquers Broadway." Again I hoped that a show might be successful, and its songs click with listeners, broaden our currently cramped musical lexicon...
...best four on Broadway last season! (Out of a total of about seven.) The Indo-American audience wasn't large enough to keep it afloat, and it didn't attract the idle non-Desi curious. Inserting American Idol notoriety Tamyra Gray did little to pump up the gross. Bombay Dreams ran only eight months and closes today...