THE GOLDEN, GLOBAL INDIAN
Two Oscars. We’re still rubbing our eyes. How did AR Rahman get here? And where does he go from here?
JUNE 2009 – HOW COULD AR RAHMAN BECOME THE FIRST Indian musician to hold an Oscar? This rhetorical question arises from the signs, over the years, that if the genius from Chennai found his way to global recognition, it would be through the Grammies. That was the international award I thought he’d win first, this restless pop-rock explorer whose far-flung voyages of musical introspection have consistently reshaped the landscape of the film song. There was the unmatched finish in his albums, for instance – the kind of sonic spit-polish we’ve encountered only in international records. Then there were the influences that shaped Rahman – Osibisa, Jim Reeves, Switched-On Bach, Chick Corea, Vangelis and Dave Grusin, none of which appear, at least at first glance, capable of being co-opted into the traditional five-minute film song.
Even Rahman’s early days – the days leading up to August 1992, when the sounds of Roja exploded in Tamil Nadu, causing fissures and cracks in the existing compositional model (the symphonic orchestral model, exemplified by the monolithic might of Ilayaraja), and the eventual breaking away of a new musical subcontinent – pointed not so much towards a film composer as some sort of incipient rock star. First, Rahman’s classmates roped him into a band for inter-school cultural competitions, introducing him to rock and Deep Purple and Pink Floyd. Then came Roots, the band Rahman formed with musicians like Sivamani, where he procured a sequencing gear and began to compose experimental pieces. Then L Shankar came calling, asking Rahman to back his band, Epidemics.
Rahman even complained to Rolling Stone, a little more than a year ago, about the lack of opportunity in the pre-Roja days, coming off like a sweaty little man whose palms were callused from pushing against a giant boulder. “It was frustrating. It was only film music. To liberate yourself from this and go to another space was impossible. A normal person would never relate to what we wanted to play.” And look at him now, cradling two Academy Awards in his arms in the manner of a proud father posing with newborn twins. It’s still only “film music” – but he has liberated it and gone into the other space he so desired, the global pop-rock space. And, miracle of miracles, the “normal people” he referred to, those happy, willing slaves to traditional models of film music, have snapped their shackles. They now wave cigarette lighters in unison with Rahman’s rhythms.
I would be lying if I said I saw this moment. It was the eighties. Hindi film music was, for a large part, stricken by drought. But down in Tamil Nadu, the decade was marked by a ceaseless downpour, thanks to Ilayaraja, a benevolent monarch who doled out musical riches to his subjects with unstinting largesse. And yet, there was a question that hovered in the air – unasked, unanswered. MS Viswanathan, the magician before Ilayaraja, sprinkled fairy dust on the melody line, causing it to burst into miraculous shapes and forms. Ilayaraja, subsequently, breathed life into the interstices. With his staggering gift for arrangement, he ensured that no part of a song was left untended, even the parts behind the vocals, and especially the parts between the stanzas. So the question we were asking – even if we weren’t aware, then, that we were asking it – is what else could be done with the film song.
With his breakthrough in Roja, Rahman answered that question. And he did so by reshaping the dynamics of the acoustics, something that could never have been done in the era of live recording. The sound just before Rahman (that is, Ilayaraja’s sound) was characterised by weight, by the twinning of a melody line with a contrapuntal groove. Rahman’s sound, on the other hand, was the very definition of lightness. It was as if the tune was floating in an amnion of ambient music, as if the melody lines were freed from instrumental underpinnings and this weight was redistributed in the surroundings. It was as if the very atmosphere were aquiver with sound. No one had heard anything like it – not in Tamil Nadu, and not in India, as Roja went on to enslave a nation.
It was a young sound, a modern sound, and – though we didn’t know it then – a global sound, even if, for a while, it appeared that Rahman’s music could only be cotton candy, spun sugar that’s sweet on the ears but with barely any nutrition. There was, for instance, Kangalil enna eeramo (Uzhavan, 1993), where the soaring melody lines were tethered to a bouncy, pizzicato percussion, or Usilampatti penkutti (Gentleman, 1993), where Rahman proved that it was possible to rustle up a rustic ambience without invoking Ilayaraja. These were beautiful numbers, but they did not especially point towards a composer capable of true greatness. There was something almost antiseptic about these songs – they were too refined, too polished, too perfect. We loved these songs because they were a welcome change, but little did we suspect that Rahman was just warming up.
In 1995, with Rangeela, Rahman accomplished something no composer from the South had – he successfully crossed over to Hindi cinema with a set of original compositions. A number like Kya kare kya na kare, for instance, sat perfectly in a Mumbai milieu, empathetically tuned to the tossed-off angst of a tapori torn between being in love and admitting to being in love. And back home, Rahman was dazzling fans with his facility with symphonic arrangements – in Strawberry kanne (Minsaara Kanavu, 1997), whose operetta texture was just right for the onscreen battle-of-the-sexes banter – and even swing jazz, in Kannai katti kollaadhey (Iruvar, 1997). With the irresistible guitar riffs that kicked off the latter, and the delightful percussion that changed colour on alternate sets of a four-count beat, the thundering chorus – Viduthalai (“Freedom”) – appeared to be a triumphant cry of liberation from traditional modes of creating film music.
And then, sometime towards the end of nineties, Rahman’s music began to achieve the kind of burnished glow that only comes from the perfect balance of personal creativity and public satisfaction. Overnight, the composer got rid of the awkward pauses that would sometimes bring the mood of a song to a grinding halt (the suspended-in-time sitar strains after the mukhda of Pyaar yeh in Rangeela, for instance). He ironed out his tune transitions. He smoothened out his interludes, the one thing he never appeared to give much thought to earlier. I still recall how startled I was by the astounding Jiya jale (Dil Se, 1998), where a plaintive sarangi bracketed the opening line of the antara without interrupting for a second the rhythm of the piece, or Rut aa gayi re (1947 Earth, 1998), whose magnificent second interlude bristled with borderline-menacing strings that evoked Prokofiev’s Montagues and Capulets.
And where Rahman’s earlier numbers were (mostly) merely catchy and fun, his work at this point became gifts that kept on giving. Each time you heard a song, you’d unearth a new layer, and yet, if you didn’t want to dig all that much, they were still – well – catchy and fun on the surface, which translated to off-the-charts popularity. And there was always a balance. For every upbeat Kahin aag lage (Taal, 1999), there was a wistful Nahin saamne, with a gentle tom-tom rhythm adding to the melancholia, as if even the percussion were too drained for anything more animated, and if playfulness marked the mood of Kaadhal sadugudu (Alaipaayuthey, 2000), the ticking heart of the film was contained in Snehidhane, where Rahman poured his soul into delineating the sweet sorrow inherent in a relationship where man and woman were united by marriage and yet separated by distance.
And now, it appears Rahman has completed his transition to the other extreme, with albums that are increasingly more personal, more idiosyncratic, and, therefore, infinitely more fascinating. Towards the end of Barso re (Guru, 2007), the low-throbbing hum of a lightsabre made an unexpected appearance, and in Style (Sivaji: The Boss, 2007) – an instance of Rahman’s experimentation at its eccentric best – the mood was as if an eighties electro-pop band like Kraftwerk were slowed down to a crawl and layered with raucous bursts of hip-hop before the whole thing were rendered in Japanese (thanks to the layering of the lyrics, which were all but incomprehensible). There’s very little in his music that’s instantly catchy and fun anymore, because Rahman is no longer just making soundtracks; he’s painting soundscapes.
Over the years, our concept of the Film Album has been a collection of songs of five to six different moods, and the skill of the composers was revealed in the way they worked around these limitations. It’s not that they never experimented, but these experimentations seldom interfered with the surface of the song – and so the casual listener still came away with something to hum after one round of radio play. But Rahman doesn’t seem to care about any of this – which is really the only way for a pure musician to work. (Of course, you could argue that a music director for a movie can’t afford to be a “pure musician,” and you would be right in a way.) The sound of Rahman, today, is the sound of a musician trying to break free. (Now you see why I thought he’d bring home a Grammy, rather than two Oscars?)
And that’s why, unsurprisingly, the only constant of a Rahman album is the difference. In one youthful romance, you could get a sprightly sparkler of a love song, something relatively traditional like Kabhi kabhi Aditi (Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, 2008), whose surprise lies mainly in the rhythm, which kicks in like an afterthought, well into the second line, changing, in an instant, the texture of a number that you thought was going to be coloured primarily by whiny pickings on an acoustic guitar. Whereas in another youthful romance, Rahman could spring, out of nowhere, a song like Paravaigal seyyudhe (Sillunu Oru Kadhal, 2006), setting the words to spunky, sprightly, bite-sized bebop riffs, as if a brassier version of his own Vennila (Iruvar) were routed through Dizzy Gillespie’s Oh-Sho-Be-Do-Be.
Even when Rahman’s music isn’t what you expect, even when it doesn’t find its way to that sweet spot, you almost always catch a whiff of creative restlessness, that refusal to settle for easy reconfigurations of past hits when that could be all that the marketplace demands – and in that respect, he is the true successor of RD Burman, another restless experimenter whose sound defied the sameness of much of his competition. That’s why it’s surprising that Time labelled Rahman the Mozart of Madras, instead of going with someone like Schoenberg – to pick a name out of the classical music canon – who did much to veer music away from pre-established styles. That is Rahman’s great achievement, that he pioneered a style that’s entirely his own.
Rahman finished what RD Burman began, but couldn’t complete because of the times he lived in. One of the reasons Rahman’s genius has shone through so unfettered is that he arrived on the musical scene when the country was expanding, when the world was shrinking, and when he could be exactly who he wanted to be without worrying if enough listeners would get his music – whether in the North or in the South. During the age of MSV and Ilayaraja, Tamil film music was for Tamil Nadu and the Tamils scattered worldwide. Very few non-Tamils had a clue what this music was all about because the film industry, the music industry, the country, and indeed the world, was split up into isolated pockets of locally consumed culture.
The audience for the music of those older composers was a vertical cross-section of Tamil Nadu, percolating from the cities downwards to the tiny little outposts, and it is a mark of the genius of MSV and Ilayaraja that they were able to incorporate so many sounds and so many genres into their music, while still satisfying what you’d call the least-common-denominator listener, the Tamil equivalent of someone from the North who tapped his feet to massy Laxmikant-Pyarelal numbers. But today, thanks to the Internet and a gaggle of news channels traversing the breadth of the nation in search of stories – can you imagine a Tamil masala movie named Sivaji, starring a Tamil hero named Rajinikanth, becoming a nationwide sensation even ten years ago? – the world is clued into what is happening at our doorsteps, and when we raised a toast to Rahman, it was only a matter of time before rest of the nation, and subsequently the world did too.
Rahman is the product of a generation that never existed earlier – the global Tamilian, if you will, and by extension, the global Indian. And when it came to the “sound” of his music – rooted yet not specifically so, Indian yet not alienatingly so – he had the extraordinary latitude of not having to depend on the earlier top-down model, the vertical model of listeners inside a state. He could, instead, get the same numbers of listeners (and perhaps more) thanks to a horizontal model, spread out across the surface, the cream, the upper crust of the state, the country and the world. He can, today, afford to appeal only to the equivalent of the consumers of multiplex movies. Because even if there aren’t enough buyers for his kind of global music – think Hey, goodbye nanba (Aayitha Ezhuthu, 2004) – inside Tamil Nadu, the numbers are more than made up for by music enthusiasts across the country, and around the world.
This global market has allowed Rahman to experiment with his sound, and it has allowed his genius to unfurl on his terms. Today, Rahman need not concern himself about the pan-Indian viability of – to take an example from his outstanding soundtrack for Delhi-6, released this February – the Sting-meets-Steely Dan ethos of Rehna tu. This is a global sound that is not going to find favour in the interiors of an India whose films (at least from Bollywood) have increasingly oriented themselves towards the tastes of upscale urbanites – and Rahman wouldn’t have been able to put out such a tune, say, twenty years ago. (Even if he wanted to, the director would have balked.) Such phenomenal freedom – to do exactly what one wants to do, and to be accepted and celebrated for the same – is a consequence of the global age Rahman is in.
Before Rahman, when composers wanted to stretch, when they wanted to exercise the muscles atrophied by the monotony of film music, they branched out into non-film albums. In the mid-eighties, for instance, Ilayaraja came out with How To Name It and Nothing But Wind, and RD Burman collaborated with Jose Flores on Pantera. But today, (multiplex) Bollywood has become so experimental that Rahman can explore non-film-style music within the context of a film album. I suspect an interesting trend will emerge if we move away from the cities and conduct polls on the kind of music the people in the interiors are really swaying to. I doubt, for instance, that they would have the patience or the inclination to subscribe to the famous dictum of needing repeated listenings to get someone’s music – but the fact is that Rahman doesn’t need to factor these considerations into his compositions. He can just be himself.
The evolution of Bollywood is the other factor that has aided the evolution of Rahman. Considering that he is among the most collaborative of composers, the most accepting of the humbling notion that one needn’t always know everything, it is fortunate that a significant portion of his energies are channelled towards gilding the visions of Bollywood filmmakers who are ambitious, who understand the value Rahman brings to their films, and who do not mind giving him the space and the time and the collaborative creative inputs to bring out the best in him. Where a composer from an earlier era may have burned out because of having to conjure up, for the millionth time, a generic love song or a generic estrangement number, these directors have kept Rahman’s creative fires burning.
Then, of course, there’s the dizzying panoply of technology that’s taken for granted today, which has helped the recording style become a part of Rahman’s sound. Earlier, the tabla was just a tabla, and a voice was available in just one timbre. But today, a tabla is simply an input for a console that can render it practically unrecognisable, practically a spanking new instrument. The composer can, quite literally, play God – and no song need ever sound like an earlier one any more. In Masakkali (the hit track from Delhi-6), for instance, there’s a periodic flight of violins, which adds a fantastic, out-of-nowhere texture to the number. But it’s not violins. It’s not a full-bodied string-section sound, in that it’s been tempered (and tampered with), using technology. Rahman’s vocabulary – and by extension, the vocabulary of those who followed – is completely different from that of earlier composers from the live-music generation (and subsequently, more in tune with a global market).
There’s, of course, a flip side to this global sound, and that’s that everyone in the globe has access to its building blocks, something that Rahman acknowledged while speaking to Rolling Stone. “[At the time of Roja], that sound was just mine. Now people are sharing that sound. So to do something is not just about a different sound anymore.” Perhaps inevitably, today, the lines between the top composers (Rahman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Vishal-Shekhar) are increasingly beginning to blur. When the compositional style is “Indian,” it’s easier to identify, say, Arziyaan (Delhi-6) as a Rahman creation, for no other composer whips up such a spiritual fervour. But it becomes murkier when we’re talking pop-style compositions – like Kabhi kabhi Aditi, or Kahin to hogi (also from Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, which sounded like a throwback to eighties’ acts like Paul Young and Peter Cetera).
But Rahman’s best compositions are uniquely his, if only for the dense (and daringly ingenious) layering. In another approach to his craft that is light years distanced from those before him (where the entire composition needed to be envisioned in advance), Rahman approaches music like an editor would approach a movie, or a precocious child a Lego set. He records all the takes, picks what he wants, and splices the bits into the final composition. It is, perhaps, no accident that AR Rahman is the first Indian musician to get global recognition – because his is the first instance of a truly global sound, from global processes engineered with global technology. Earlier, in the case of pioneers, the oft-employed cliché was East-meets-West, but the genius of Rahman is that, in his hands, East is West. The twain has met.
Rahman is a composer who’s always two steps ahead of technology, so the workings of his phenomenal mind will always find more creative modes of expression. The future, therefore, looks limitless. With those Oscars in hand, he could find doors opening for him in Hollywood. But it is still the traditional symphonic score that drives most Western films, so Rahman could do worse than seek out a few “non-exotic” projects, so that he doesn’t become the go-to guy only when a “Bollywood-style” Jai Ho number is required. But all that can wait. Let’s just savour his win for now. This is a moment that’s not likely to be repeated in our lifetime, at least not through projects made within our country. The wise minds that submit our films for Oscar consideration (in the foreign film category) routinely place their bets on losers, so even that solitary Oscar doesn’t look likely. And this only makes Rahman’s double win more special – a global recognition for a truly global musician.
Copyright ©2009 Rolling Stone. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Adithya
March 12, 2009
This was so awesomely written that your own lines describe you.
“So the question we were asking – even if we weren’t aware, then, that we were asking it – is what else could be done with the film song.”
Seriously, I was wondering what else could you write about Rahman and you come up with this. Brilliant.
Like you said, it is the reach provided by todays’ times and the willingness to experiment with new sound, that has brought the genius in him in front of everyone. He is the first Indian composer who is considered to be a genius with more than just empirical evidence. This is basically the right time, right place you were talking about in the previous article, that was so incredulously misunderstood.
My only wish is more directors, like Mani and Shankar, should be willing to give him all the freedom to compose. I wish there be an year like 2008 in Tamil too for him!
What would be interesting is, to take up his Tamil and Hindi compositions separately and see how he fared. That would call for an article of its own. Till maybe, Rang De Basanti, I think it was all equal but after Guru, the Tamil graph has gone down. At least by numbers.
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Ravishankar
March 12, 2009
Superb. Its a pleasure to read these kind of posts. What a post… Take a bow. Ranganji
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brangan
March 12, 2009
Adithya: Thanks man. Over the years, I’ve written a lot of stuff about Rahman, and when Rolling Stone called, it seemed the perfect opportunity to pull together all those various thoughts, in sequence, with the Oscars as a peg — the journey of ARR, so to speak. Hence, “The Road to the Oscars.”
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anantha
March 12, 2009
Lovely piece again!
As for your statement that the global market and the pan-Indian audience lets him experiment with various sounds, I think it’s a little more than just that. During a SDM publicity chat, he attributed his experimenting to himself being a listener and the lines blurring between him, being a listener and being a composer to.
So essentially, he is getting a chance to tell more people the sounds he likes and wants others to listen and like. He said that he also wanted to do it in a way that we are some ways familiar with. He was responding to a question about Taxi Taxi and Gangsta Blues, but that also explains the Haken Continuum instrumental piece that closes Rehna Tu.
He grew up, the rest of us grew up with him and now he he is confident that he can be edgy without losing listeners 🙂
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Shashi
March 12, 2009
Reading your post reminded me of the famous line ‘Jo Jeeta wahi Sikander’. Rahman’s genius notwithstanding, your long and beautifully written piece seemed like over-chewing on his achievement. I have a feeling, there are a few other music directors currently who are equally capable but don’t have an ‘Oscar’ to show for their talent and body of work.
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brangan
March 12, 2009
Shashi: Well, true, but then nobody is asking me to write about how, say, S-E-L make some of the best melodies in the business today — and consistently, at that. Or how Vishal Bhardwaj has quietly defined a musical style of his own. (Listen to the songs of Gulaal, and you’ll see what I mean.) Or how Amit Trivedi came out of nowhere and socked us in the solar plexus with that jaw-dropping soundtrack for Dev D. This was about celebrating Rahman’s journey, and that’s what I did.
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Prakash
March 12, 2009
Wow! What a brilliant post. Just a small correction, music of Gulaal is by Piyush Mishra. BR-through this post alone you have taken us thro 20 years-the times of Ilaiyaraja & Rahman! BTW,can you share your thoughts on ARR’s wonderful felicitation prog. I thought it was a sight for Gods to see MSV, IR & ARR together and speaking about each other.
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Vijayaraj
March 12, 2009
Baradwajji ur writeup is absolutely amazing.I really like the way you have analysed Rahmanji’s music especially the layering part.I didn’t want ur writing to end.I am ur new fan.
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brangan
March 12, 2009
Prakash: I know it’s Piyush M. I was just saying it was an extension of a style we’ve now come to identify as Vishal B’s. And I missed that function — not a big fan of stage orations/feliciations. But I did read a few transcripts here and there, and it sounded like fun 🙂
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vikk
March 12, 2009
//Or how Vishal Bhardwaj has quietly defined a musical style of his own. (Listen to the songs of Gulaal, and you’ll see what I mean.)//
Gulaal is directed by Anuarg Kashyap, Music by Piyush Mishra..so from where did Vishal Bhardwaj musical style came.. Am I missing something
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Mithun
March 12, 2009
I was wondering why the frequency of posts was less the past couple of weeks. Now I know. Someone was blissfully in a different world listening to some wonderful music. Your write up does complete justice to Rahman’s music..
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Aditya Pant
March 12, 2009
“whose surprise lies mainly in the rhythm, which kicks in like an afterthought, well into the second line, changing, in an instant, the texture of a number….”
I felt somewhat similar when I first heard Genda Phool from Delhi 6, the beat suddenly changes in the third line when Rekha Bhardwaj sings ‘saiyan hain vyapari”. That works so well in the context of the film, because that’s exactly the point where the NRI protaginists starts dancing to this song.
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Aditya Pant
March 12, 2009
..And I completely agree with you about Gulaal being in Vishal’s style of music. However, it is more traditional in structure and sound than what Vishal would do.
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Madhav
March 12, 2009
Awesome post. The best piece I’ve ever read on Rahman, and I’ve been a die-hard fan since the Roja days.
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Utkal Mohanty
March 12, 2009
Wonderfully written piece, Rangan! The beauty is the way you have captured the quintessential quakities of Rahman’s music without getting too technical. Or amkinga long catalogoe of all his songs. Ypu have illustrtaed things quite well by picking just a few representative songs.
Sasi, I dont agre with you when you say,” I have a feeling, there are a few other music directors currently who are equally capable but don’t have an ‘Oscar’ to show for their talent and body of work.” Yes, a few others are doing some good work. But Rahman is lightyears ahead of the rest. And it’s nota question of ” Jo Jeeta wohi siknadar”. Rahman was a phenomenon long before the Oscars. Why, even Rangan had written a long piece on Rahman much before this.
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Shankar
March 13, 2009
Superb write-up, Baddy. I also loved the fact that nee yaaraiyume vittu kudukkalai!! 🙂
Meanwhile on the felicitation program, I enjoyed what IR, MSV, ARR etc had to say. But I was also suitably impressed with Harris. He was very thankful (mentioned about how he had the motivation to learn classical guitar and keyboards) humble (mentioned about envying and yearning to buy a keyboard stand similar to the one Rahman used) and closed it by saying he was honored to be called upon to speak in front of the 3 pillars of tamizh film music. I thought he conducted himself with grace and class.
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Vijay
March 13, 2009
Shashi, this piece was not just about the Oscars. Oscars was just the culmination point. Read the title again. I did’nt think this was overchewing anything. This covered his body of work over 16yrs. All these other guys, Trivedi or Piyush they have barely begun. Lets see where they are after a few albums before we sweepingly declare that anyone could have done what Rahman has done, (which is, changing the sound of Indian film Music). Lets see if Trivedi or Piyush are even around after 5 yrs, leave alone them redefining film music. Maybe then BR can write a similiar tribute for them.
BR, I am surprised that after writing such a long piece on Rahman you meekly submitted to Shashi’s opinion instead of defending your piece. Do you really think that Trivedi or Piyush or Vishal deserve a similar writeup and only because no one asked you to write about them, that you didnt write one for them? Come on!
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Sid
March 13, 2009
Great work, BR — as I already mentioned in the last post! TERRIFIC stuff, seriously.
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Sal
March 13, 2009
@ vik: I think the implication is that the stylistic choices made in terms of the composition of Gulaal’s songs and the overall feel and sound of the songs, follow the template created by Vishal. For instance, compare “Ranaji” from Gulaal and “Namak” from Omkara and you’ll get a similar “feel”, so to speak.
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Muthuvel
March 13, 2009
Guess you mixed most of your earlier posts on Rahman, your comments and put them all together as a single piece 🙂 Deja Vu all over!
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Ravi K
March 13, 2009
Great article. Rahman truly did bring the idea of *soundscapes* to Indian film music. Sounds can be combined, chopped up, and modified to create an effect greater than the sum of their parts.
ARR is so chameleon-like and experimental that I wonder what’s next for Indian film music. He has a style and yet he has no set style.
Regarding your words about India submitting losers to the Oscars, you are absolutely right. And it is telling that it took a British film to get ARR an Oscar (no, TWO Oscars) rather than an Indian film.
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brangan
March 13, 2009
Aditya Pant: Yeah, that was a great instance of a director and a composer working in sync. The minute Abhishek got up and started dancing as the beat kicked in, the song suddenly made more sense 🙂
Shankar: It’s not a question of “vittu kudukkalai.” It’s just that I wanted to write about ARR in perspective. Because he *is* part of a continuum, just as a piece on the “journey” of IR would be incomplete without putting *him* in perspective of the music that came before him (comparing, say, the way Kalyani was shaped in “Vaidehi Raman” vs. “Mannavan vandhaanadi” — as opposed to blanket statements like “he made TN turn away from Hindi film music” and so on).
Vijay: I am NOT comparing Rahman to these others — but there’s a lot of very interesting work being done elsewhere, and no one wants to hear about it. (Try pushing an S-E-L story to a mag, and you’ll know what I mean.) These others aren’t yet at a point where they deserve a “similar writeup” — sure — but there are times, as a movies-music writer, you wish there was more receptivity to non-Rahman work. That’s what I was referring to in my reply to Shashi.
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Vijay
March 13, 2009
BR, maybe the case is different in Mumbai? With all the high profile films that SEL get to do, I ‘ll be surprised if they dont get atleast some press over there. They are not that popular down in the South I think.
But I thought you would have been able to do atleast an individual album review even if not a separate piece on their whole body of work. And use that review as some sort of a peg to talk about SEL’s style overall. Or even that doesnt evoke any interest?
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Deepak
March 13, 2009
A very beautifully written post and hope to see more of these kind
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Vivek
March 13, 2009
Ok maybe I have spent too much time in your website, so I could actually pick out stuff on an article to article basis. Oh and the felicitation, the most interesting part was actually IR’s speech.Maybe it was just me, but there was an undertone of a miffed man to the entire speech as opposed to the effusive praise others were showering. Ah musicians and their quirks.
Would have been great to subbudu on stage, I remember being really pissed of with his rubbishing of Roja and Bombay
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raj
March 13, 2009
Wow! This piece clicked for me though I havent paid tht much attention to Rahman as this author has done. That speaks volumes of the calibre of the writer here.
On specific strands of discussion that has emanated subsequently:
1. I dont think Shashi was referring to Vishal(Bharadwaj or -Shekar), Shankar or Ehsaan or Vidaysagar or Loy. We all know who he is referring to, and who dare claim to refute that particular genius doesnt deserve the oscar or a write-up
2. I do wish something of Oscar nature happens to IR, if only to trigger Baradwaj Rangan to write a similar piece on him. Previous pieces by Baradwaj havent done justice to IR in the way this article does to ARR.
3. Damn, having said that, I hope something nice happens to IR, not any something.
4. I think for Bollywood watchers, the Delhi-6, beat joining in the third line to sync with the visuals might be know. For those who grew up on IR, it is not. Atleast, here we can confidently refuse to cede pioneering spirit to ARRR – vide Baradawaj himself wrote about Ilangathu veesudhe where the subtle beat change captures Vikram’s joining the Surya gang in the real sense as opposed to having just been with them until then – this during the song in a subtle moment. As a movie soundtrack creator, Rahman hasnt surpassed Raja yet.
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brangan
March 13, 2009
Vijay: Of course, I can always do a Between Reviews. (And thanks to the blog, it will have a decent reach.) But even elsewhere in the country, you just do not find that many deep stories about music from the other composers. In the sense that if I tell someone I want to write an analytical piece on ARR’s music, there will always be takers. But if I say I want to examine how S-E-L have fused old-fashioned melody-making with new studio sounds, it’ll be a tough sell.
raj: I don’t recall that ‘Ilangathu veesudhe’ writeup. Where was it, do you remember? Oh, and thanks for muddying the so-far-clear discussion waters 🙂
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raj
March 13, 2009
I remember you wrote it – god knows where it is hidden in the archives and comments between here, livejournal and wordpress.
Muddying? How, romba careful-a, mellow-a dhaane ezhudhinanen?
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brangan
March 13, 2009
I just re-read my comment about Kalyani in “Vaidehi Raman” vs. “Mannavan vandhaanadi” — and I just wanted to say, this wasn’t a which-is-better comparison. I was referring to the sense in which the older song was a kutcheri-level usage of the raga, in all its weight, whereas “Vaidehi Raman” is the thinking of a more modern (in thought) and experimental mind. KVM’s approach to the raga is as astounding in its classicism as IR’s is in its modernism — and I wasn’t comparing the composers. I know this is beginning to sound like a legal disclaimer, but you never know with these statements 🙂
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raj
March 13, 2009
ok, got it, The bollywood reference. So, are you saying that we should suppress facts just to go with a peaceful discussions?
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Utkal Mohanty
March 13, 2009
I think it is Amit Trivedi who deserves a write up more than S-E_L. good as they are, S-E-L haven’t broken any new ground after Rahman. But Trivedi has, even if his ability to do so over the years is yet to be seen. Songs like Emosanal Atyachar or Oh Pardesi create a different set of musical grammar and aesthetics. And he displays what can be called ‘attitude’ which is not so much musical as cultural.
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Venkatesh
March 13, 2009
Wonderful writeup BR.
However, i cannot but feel that there is an overall tone of you have to be somehow sophisticated to understand/like ARR’s music. Was that intentional ?
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Ramesh
March 13, 2009
What travesty. The music for which he won the Oscar does not feature even once in this piece. Still, all of us know that this Oscar is more a lifetime achievement award than a single film recognition. Great article though !! It’s amazing how you keep churning out stuff about Rahman
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A Fan Apart
March 13, 2009
Was glad to see your name at the top of this piece when i opened this month’s rolling stone. Rahman is a bit too close to my heart for some typical fanzine piece to suffice.
It was interesting to read how Rahman had to wrest the crown (in a manner of speaking) from Ilayaraja in the south. Bollywood was just there for the taking. The clarion call of Rangeela must have scared the hell out of the hindi music directors then; and if it didn’t, it should have. All those laxmikant-pyarelal clones (and L&P themselves, most of the time), all those hacks called malik and shravan and lahiri – they’ve been rendered extinct.
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Sudhir
March 13, 2009
“One of the reasons Rahman’s genius has shone through so unfettered is that he arrived on the musical scene when the country was expanding, when the world was shrinking, and when he could be exactly who he wanted to be without worrying if enough listeners would get his music – whether in the North or in the South”
i think its a pretty flat point that ARR-fans like me have to put up with right from a passerby to Baradwaj Rangan 🙂 ……..ARRahman’s music has the power and ability to attract people of various ethnicities…….we had paki, chinese people in our yahoo group and then there is this Slovakian(?) “Ilroda Dilroz” who seems to make a life out of remixing ARR songs…..
IR was composng music in 90’s and there was Deva, Vidhyasagar etc who also composed music in 90’s, but they couldnt break the barriers of north……we all agree that IR’s peak was till late 80’s like until 1988/89 , IR fans would say 2009 :-)……..i dont know how much the world changed in 3 yrs – from 89′ to 92’……..
also, “expanding country”, “shrinking world” meant, lot of choice available to people within the country and outside to listen to various genres of music – literally everything…….so should i say “IR and MSV had huge following because tamil people werent exposed to Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin during those days”? 🙂
i think we must credit ARRahman’s music with its multi-ethnicity flavour for his global fame as much as we credit and feel proud of “rootedness” of IR and MSV’s music……..
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RR
March 13, 2009
BR, Loved the discussions about Nan Kadavul and Katrathu Tamil but I did not leave a comment there.
You provide a great platform for intellectual discussions about Cinema just that you also attract a few fanatics who purge here and there to feed their frustrated Subconscious diluting Cinematic IQ.
Instead of screaming at every Rahman post on the Net, I request Raja fans to take a proactive approach.
1. Have a dedicated Website for Raja, get copyrights of his songs and upload his Master pieces to showcase his Work to the World.
2. Send those links to Warner Bros, Fox Pictures, Columbia Tristar.
3. Try to Contact the right agents in USA and Europe and tell them about Raja and his works.
It’s sickening to see Raja impregnated in every Rahman Column on the Internet.
BR is not like other critics to thrive on sensationalism. Please Spare this place for intelluctual discussions on Celluloid Art forms.
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brangan
March 13, 2009
raj: I was just referring to your casual dismissal of “Bollywood watchers.” There are plenty of composers from Bollywood who have tailored their compositions to the requirements of the character/situation — and long before IR.
Venkatesh: “Sophisticated?” I didn’t intend that at all (though the subconscious works in mysterious ways). Which lines or paras gave you that impression?
Sudhir: Are you really trying to tell me that without the Internet, without the media that has allowed the world to shrink and Bollywood to spread to a global scale, all this would have been possible? Theoretically, I suppose, yes, but I highly doubt it. The point is not just about good music, but also the *means* for people around the world to access it and discuss it. I don’t think that this takes away from (or is pejorative about) ARR’s music in any way.
rr: I think “fanatics” is a very strong word, for it implies fans who are somewhat unreasonably in love with their idols and for ridiculously ideological reasons. When art is being discussed, a certain amount of heated passion is inevitable. (Otherwise, frankly, we wouldn’t be discussing art.)
Had the Internet existed in 1976, you can bet that every MSV fan(atic) would have “impregnated” IR threads with paeans to their idol — about how every song from this upstart is being praised when no one is listening to this veteran in a corner who is still creating great music 🙂 It’s inevitable, and as long as these comments bring something to the table, I don’t see what’s so “sickening” about it.
I’m a big Rahman fan, but even I get annoyed sometimes when I see him getting credited for everything in film music. The other day, I read something (I think in TOI) about how he was the first to use North Indian sounds in Tamil film music. I wanted to call the reporter and play for him MSV’s ‘Aadaludan paadalai kettu,’ a rousing bhangra number if there ever was one. ARR’s genius doesn’t need such ill-informed props, and when this sort of (mis)information is so abundant all around, I guess some amount of “frustration” (as you put it) is inevitable.
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Shankar
March 13, 2009
Baddy, of course, I knew what your intent was (and that’s why my comment ended with a smiley!). And you are absolutely right, their journeys are intertwined…it would be hard to discuss each of them in vacuum.
Now that you mention it, wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could do a series on journeys of MSV, IR, RDB etc picking and choosing songs to illustrate your points, capturing significant musical turning points etc? Think about it…
raj, aarambichuttaiyyan, aarambichuttan!! 🙂
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RR
March 13, 2009
There’s an overload of hatred in the net about Raja and Rahman. Most of them use all the available platforms for venting out.
You have well-informed audiences, BR. There are many sites and Forums on the net for passionate outbursts! Why not preserve the implicit norm of this forum for Intellectual discussions about Cinema alone?
Yes some section of the Mainstream media get carried away by Rahman juggernaut and it can irk Common Music fans but don’t you think Raja needs more serious fans who can who would do something to take him to Grammy’s or Oscars than merely making noise in every Column about Rahman?
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Aditya Pant
March 13, 2009
BR – I think Raj is right about the “casual dismissal of Bollywood watchers”. We really are under-privileged philistines who cannot understand or appreciate music ….. because we have not grown up on IR.
It doesn’t matter if some of us have exposed themselves to IR’s work later in their lives, but that doesn’t matter…..because we have not “grown up” on IR 🙂
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raj
March 13, 2009
shankar, idhu correct dialogue.
BR, yes, thats right. I am not articulating correctly – long before IR, there existed others is perfectly correct both in Hindi and tamil/other languages. I perceived a “first time done in Delhi -6” implication – you know how sometimes, as you gave a TOI example, you get irritated by “ulaga cinemavil mudhal muraiyaga” claims. In this case, it is my fault rather than the writer’s but the feeling’s the same 🙂
Yes, I havent found many better Bhangra songs than Aadaludan. For instance, the whole body of work of Mehndi(a reasonably popular artist whose calling card is Bhangra) doesnt even compare – and that is quite something which showcases MSV’s genius.
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raj
March 13, 2009
Aditya, ouch that hurts, man 🙂
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Aditya Pant
March 13, 2009
Raj: It wouldn’t hurt to read something properly before commenting. Not the first time that my comment has been taken wrongly, or certain assumptions made about me. As you realize, I never said anything about that being the first time in Delhi-6.
I will try to improve my writing to avoid misinterpretation, while you can work at better interpreting. 🙂
Peace for now!
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Shankar
March 13, 2009
Baddy, with regard to North Indian sounds in tamil music comment, I feel such feedback actually reflects on the uncanny abilities of MSV and IR to fuse various genres seamlessly into the format they work on (without alienating their core audience) where it becomes indistinguishable to a casual listener. I also feel that their musical mindset was such that they were focused on integrating various forms tightly (for example, WCM background structure with a predominant Indian melody etc) rather than taking a genre (swing jazz, reggae etc) and exploiting it full blown for a track. As you say, their thought process could also have been governed by the needs of local consumption, vertical audience etc. Of course, I’m glad to see that Rahman has the freedom now to compose as he likes without having to worry about reaching every person in his immense audience.
There are many views abounding that previous composers did not push the boundaries as much as ARR does today which I feel is totally wrong. Your article does provide the right perspective that it has to be seen in context with all the other factors (expanding audience, technology etc etc).
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Arun
March 13, 2009
Wow! Brilliant.. The blog was as good as a Rahmnan’s melody..I wish this gets published in every magazine and news paper in the world. Front Page.
Rahman is my “thallaivar” :-D.. Period.
I wish you wrote about Sports and a similar one on Sachin.. he is the Rahman like to Sport
I wish you wrote this on all my favs.. Gandhi, RK Narayan, Kamal Hassan, Rajini too..!!!
Sometimes I hate it when TOI and Mumbai Mirror and the other Loud Media get all enthu about Rahman post Oscars.. i mean do u think these fellas would have cared for Rahmans music like how u do? understood the language of his piano???
Great one Sir!
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The Normal Guy
March 13, 2009
brangan :
My startup mag wants to do an interview by email with you . Would you be interested in doing one ? You would need to fill out the answers and send it back to us anytime. How do we get in touch with you ?
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Subodh
March 13, 2009
I can never figure out why all listings of Rahman’s best works leave out Vishwavidhata or its original Pudhiya Mugam. I think the twin tracks ‘Kaliyon si palkein’ and ‘Nazron ke milne’ are among his best songs ever. I would also give honourable mention to ‘Dola dola dola dola’ from Dil hi Dil mein.
Any Comments?
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Shashi
March 14, 2009
BR, your point about this post ‘celebrating Rahman’s journey’ is well taken. Perhaps my post was a bit presumptuous given my limited knowledge of technicalities in music.
I was only trying to argue whether AR is indeed light-years ahead of all other current music directors, which certainly seems to be the collective opinion of so many people here.
And, let me also mention in passing that I wasn’t referring to IR as I have very little exposure to his music.
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Abeer Dey
March 14, 2009
Rahman is a genius of my lifetime. But I winced at your extolling the Oscars as if they are the UN awards or something. You talk of your doubt about an Indian winning another Oscar in our lifetime. But there’s nothing inherently special about the US or the Oscars. If us Indians did everything right as a country, the world might be scrambling for a Filmfare tomorrow. But considering how slavish we often are, I have doubts if it will happen, ever.
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brangan
March 14, 2009
The Normal Guy: Well, for starters, you could email me at the contact address right on top…
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Anand
March 14, 2009
When there was no TV/Video, an actor called Sivaji Ganesan not only pushed the envelope but tore it open with his performances. KB made films about prostitution, Bigamy, Politics, Carnatic music, Single woman in society when others were simply following conventions (We Tamilians did the huge mistake of labelling KB as one who specialised in middle class issues – I dont understand how Thanneer Thanneer and Achamillai is a middle class issue). Kamal Hassan strived for excellence like none of his other contemporaries did in Indian Cinema (OK, I dont want to get apologetic about it – only a few matched his efforts even in Hollywood). Ilayaraja need not write another note; for his genius in just one album – Thiruvachagam – will vouch for the fact that he deserves much more. Or if Oscars or the benchmarks, then we have the master Satyajit Ray – and I am unqualified to even comment about him – just watching girl dancing in the rain in Pather Panchali gives me goosebumps. And last but not the least, Resul Pookutty, who deserves as much space as ARR, if not more, as most of us were not even aware about his work earlier.
And this is the third article about ARR in 2 months!!
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rakesh
March 14, 2009
Amongst this discussion about the next gen composers S-E-L & Vishal- Shekar.. Do you believe Harris Jayaraj and Yuvan Shankar have done enough to be muttered in the same breath ?
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Adithya
March 15, 2009
BR: Did you come across this?
Don’t want to start any holy war but I thought it was very well written and deservedly so!
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Lax
March 15, 2009
Whoa! Not a single mention of the film which won him the Oscar, the culmination of the “Journey to Oscar”, as somebody mentioned before.
You seem to imply that Rahman could dictate terms pretty much after “Roja”. That doesnt quite explain clunkers like “Dil ne jise apna kaha”. Guess he too had to pay his bills.
Elsewhere, you mention, “Very few non-Tamils had a clue what this music was all about….
Guess you need to make that “Very few non-Southies..”. Some of IR’s biggest hits in his career were in Telugu — abba nee tiyyani debba.
Having said all that, awesome piece!
Theres no better movie/music writer in India.
— Lax
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brangan
March 15, 2009
rakesh: Both Harris and Yuvan, I feel, have charted a fixed course for themselves and are smooth-sailing on it. So while I may like individual songs and soundtracks, that excitement of listening to someone taking leaps of faith is missing for me.
Adithya: Hey, that’s a nice piece. Thanks. I’ve never heard of this publication earlier.
Lax: My sincere apologies. Of course, IR’s presence was felt in Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam too. I sometimes forget to mention that.
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raj
March 16, 2009
“Of course, IR’s presence was felt in Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam too. I sometimes forget to mention that.
”
Probably because you didnt feel it. Not your fault really. No need to apologise but yeah, enough reason to regret 🙂
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Suresh S
March 19, 2009
BR,
Well written piece. What is striking is this piece is made up of your earlier pieces and comments you have given at various times. Very similar to Rahman’s composition? 🙂
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Manu Mysore
June 8, 2009
Bravo Mr. Rangan.
Time and again, i try to classify as to what are you, a critic, a thinker, a phenomenon in your own right, got no clue. I know showering you with innuendos cannot match up your pure genius.
You’r blessed, so am i to have you in my time.
Keep the light glowing.
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VivekT
November 16, 2013
Mr. Rangan, I know I’m commenting really early on this (only almost 4 years later), but what an amazing article. I’m blown away. Some favorite parts :
– periodic flight of violins in masakali –
yes, thanks for noticing how out-of-where and seemingly senseless that is! happens so many times. mostly when an unusual sound and melody is introduced in a hindi song, the composer makes that into a major motif and uses it centrally. but this is just so coincidental and just there because it’s there – not for a specific reason. quite opposite to howard roarkian form = function theory. love it!
and there’s also a dry drum beat in the second repetition of “udiyo na dariyo”. WHY was all the music taken out suddenly and the melody left dry? just because. typical rahman. these kinds of departure from the expected used to annoy me, but now they delight me. he’s playing with those who are listening.
– rhythm as almost an afterthought in kabhi kabhi aditi.
such a brilliant way to say it. exactly what i felt.
– contrapuntal groove after Ilaiyaraja and MSV
– Even when Rahman’s music isn’t what you expect, even when it doesn’t find its way to that sweet spot, you almost always catch a whiff of creative restlessness.
EXACTLY. that’s why you respect the man for taking the shot, though he misses.
What amazing observations! I am so happy someone else noticed the first two and wrote about it. It’s like little treats out of nowhere for those who investigate more. And then go into more layers and discover more little treasures. Wonderful! Thank you!
Have you noticed the percussive progression of “saawariya” from Swades? It starts with an amazing tapping sound – maybe on a kind of pot (not ghatam for sure) or pan. And somewhere well into the song, changes into an amazing bass electronic tabla sound. And then back. Incredible – indeed a master painter of soundscapes as you said!
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