Academy Award-winning composer A.R. Rahman has said that shifts in power within the Hindi film industry have contributed to him losing Hindi projects in recent years.
“Maybe I never get to know of this, maybe it was concealed but I didn’t feel any of this. Maybe in the past eight years because a power shift has happened and people who are not creative have the power now. It might be a communal thing also… but it is not in my face,” he said, adding that he sometimes heard through “Chinese whispers” about projects going to other composers instead.
“I say good, I have more time to chill with my family. I am not in search for work. I don’t want to go in search for work. I want work to come to me; my sincerity to earn work. Whatever I deserve, I get,” Rahman said.
Talking about his initial years in Bollywood, Rahman said it took him nearly seven years to feel accepted in Bollywood despite delivering some of Hindi cinema’s most influential soundtracks in the 1990s.
Rahman, who made his Hindi film debut with Mani Ratnam’s 1991 romantic thriller Roja, followed up with Ratnam’s Bombay (1995) and Dil Se.. (1998), and also scored Ram Gopal Varma’s Rangeela (1995), his first full-fledged Hindi album.
However, it was Subhash Ghai’s 1999 romantic drama Taal that marked a turning point.
“Actually, I was still an outsider with these three, but Taal became a household [album]. It entered the kitchens of everybody, so to say. Even now, most of the North Indians still have it in their blood because it’s a little bit of Punjabi and a little bit of Hindi and a little bit of mountain music,” Rahman said.
The 59-year-old composer said he did not initially feel he belonged in Hindi cinema because he “never spoke Hindi”. Recalling a conversation with Ghai, Rahman said, “It’s very difficult for a Tamil person to speak Hindi because we have such attachment. But then Subhash Ghai said, ‘I love your music, but if you want to stay longer, learn Hindi.’ I said, ‘Okay, let me go a few steps further and learn Urdu because it’s the mother of Hindi music in the 1960s and ’70s,” he told BBC Asian Network.
Rahman added that he went on to learn Arabic, which he said is similar to Urdu in pronunciation, and later Punjabi, influenced by singer Sukhwinder Singh.
“Then I got into Punjabi because of Sukhwinder Singh’s influence when he came into my world. The reason why I got Sukhwinder was because I was asking, ‘Do you have any singer who can sing and write in Punjabi? Then my friend Brij Bhushan suggested Sukhwinder Singh,” he said.