ABSTRACT
The Indian music director A.R. Rahman needs little introduction. In many ways, his fusions of visionary South Indian music director Ilayaraja’s sound with various national and international musics transformed the sound of Indian film songs (in each of its regions). There is no question that Rahman also brought Indian cinema into clear international focus as well, and there are very few other international stars of his caliber in the Indian music industry. There are many different renditions of his biography and production history that I will not repeat here,2 but it is important to emphasize that Rahman rose to national and international stardom on the basis of his compositions for Mani Ratnam films in the Tamil language that were later dubbed into Hindi. Of particular note are the Roja soundtrack, which was released in Tamil in 1992 (in Hindi in 1994), and Bombay, which was also shot in Tamil, but dubbed and simultaneously released in Hindi and Telugu in 1995. In composing music for
films in several different languages, Rahman was able to incorporate many of the sounds and conventions of Tamil film song into Hindi film song, which not only transformed the longstanding production processes (Booth 2008), but also exotified regional Indian instruments and styles in the creation of a new sound aesthetic for Indian film songs (Sarrazin 2008). Like other music directors, Rahman does not shy away from using music arrangers and assistants in the music production process, but is well known for taking particular care in the composition of his film scores. Not surprisingly, he has won numerous awards for his background scores to Indian films and has also written several scores for Hollywood films.3
