Word: rojas
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...been a Bollywood icon for years, this man behind some of the most stunning movie soundtracks ever composed (chief among them the innovative score to Roja). But it's his music for this year's Oscar darling, Slumdog Millionaire that has made A.R. Rahman an instant hit with western audiences. Not only are sales of the soundtrack soaring as the film opens wide in Britain and the United States, but Rahman has been nominated for three Oscars - for best original score, as well as for the songs "O ... Saya" and "Jai Ho." (Read the behind-the-scenes story of Slumdog...
...Since I had put Ratnam's Nayakan on the all-TIME 100 Movies list, and cited the Rahman score for Ratnam's Roja as one of my five favorite soundtracks, it seemed a small favor in return to take a 10min. subway ride to see their new film. It was worth the trip - mine, if not theirs...
...hermetically sealed fantasy world that most Indian films inhabit, Ratnam's movies often flirt with incendiary political issues: a terrorist kidnapping in Roja; the 1992-93 Hindi-Muslim riots in Bombay; the rivalry of Tamil actor-statesman M.G. Ramachandran (known as MGR) and screenwriter-statesman M. Karunanidhi (MK) in Iruvar; more terrorism in Del Se; the Sri Lankan war in Kannathil Muthamittal. He is also fascinated with powerful figures in the Mumbai Mafia. Nayakan attached the structure of The Godfather to the career of gang lord Varadarajan Mudaliar, and Ratnam revisited the underworld in Agni Nakshatram and Thalapathi...
...studied music at Oxford and returned to Madras to write jingles for an ad agency. In 1992 Tamil director Mani Ratnam chose Rahman, then 26, to be musical director of the movie Roja. Scoring an Indian film means writing the songs (with a lyricist) as well as composing and conducting the background music. Rahman proved a master of it all. His songs were recognizably Indian but paraded a world of musical influences, from raga to reggae, from Broadway to Ennio Morricone, with each tune heightening the film's drama...
...Rahman has said his work became "a little repetitive and monotonous" with the spate of commissions that followed Roja. Composing for 50 movie scores and more than 200 songs will sap any man. But each film contains a sprig, often a full bouquet, of musical inspiration. The terminally goofy plastic-surgery movie Vishwavidhaata boasts a ravishing number, Kal Nahin Tha, with the vocalist Sujatha whispering, then warbling her heart out. Taal birthed two instant classics, Ishq Bina and Nahin Samne, both of which Rahman would adopt as signature ballads for Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Bombay Dreams...