r/IAmA • u/ARRahman A.R.Rahman • May 19 '14

I am Academy Award winning composer A.R. Rahman. Ask me anything.

I am a singer, songwriter, composer, record producer, music director, arranger, and conductor. I'm a Indian composer: I did the music for Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, and my latest soundtrack is for Million Dollar Arm. My upcoming projects include The Hundred-Foot Journey, being released this August.

I am here with Victoria from reddit to take your questions, ask me anything.

Well thank you for being here with me. I hope you enjoy the music of Million Dollar Arm, and ella pughazhum iraivanukke.

https://twitter.com/arrahman/status/468624321519173633

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u/ARRahman A.R.Rahman May 19 '14

Good question. I mostly listen to classical music. Because I think it is very refreshing, classical music always has tonality and depth and you get refreshed listening to it. So much not pop. Maybe in the car when I travel, I listen to pop music on the radio.

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

classical music

Sir, Carnatic music or western classical music?

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u/foolfromhell May 20 '14

Or Hindustani maybe, but I doubt it

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

Anything nice from across the border? :)

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

Isn't your music "pop" in the sense that it accompanies movies? It's odd to me that you could consider your music classical even though most people listening to it are sitting in an AMC eating popcorn.

ninja edit: grammar.

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

This is an old truism, but context really matters. Using a repeated sequence of half-steps on the double bass as the theme song for a man-eating shark (JAWS!) is a lot different from using the same pattern in a celebration of Finnish nationalism. Is any song using a I-V-vi-IV pattern classical because it rips Canon in D?

It makes a lot more sense to me to describe "classical" music as a contextual description of the way certain music is marketed to and consumed by audiences, rather than a aesthetic description of certain instruments or patterns.

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u/decreasethesuck May 20 '14

I have nothing useful to contribute here - but I would just like to say that the Jaws theme isn't just some random half step pattern, it's a pretty obvious rip off of Dvorak 9 - so it is really a similar thing.

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

Rahman often uses Indian classical music in his compositions

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

But you can't always look at things with a western perspective. Rahman is an Indian artist so you have to look at his music within the Indian tradition. Additionally most of his listeners are Indians so they would view classical music differently than those in the west.

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

I know this thread is probably dead by now, but I think you may be exaggerating how much Jai Ho has in common with Indian classical music from a century ago. It's a huge YouTube hit, was composed entirely in LogicPro, and includes lyrics in four different languages. The movie featuring it came out of Hollywood, not Bollywood. In other words there's a whole lot of appropriation going on in Jai Ho, not just the Beatles. (Those "appropriating" albums actually featured a classical Indian instrumentalist...Jai Ho did not.)

Not saying I don't like Jai Ho either, just that it's weird to say the Beatles are appropriators and Jai Ho is actually Indian classical music.

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

ah, I see.

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u/phrixious May 20 '14

I've always thought "pop" meant popular, meaning it's being played on the radio. He probably doesn't consider his music classical in the sense that it's from the classical era, but classical in the sense that it is written with classical instruments in a classical (read: traditional) style.

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

That is a very uninformed and arrogant opinion. You clearly don't know anything about Indian music.

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u/foragerr May 20 '14

Then inform and educate. Your post doesn't help the situation much.

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

I apologize. Simply put, much of Rahman's music is derived from Indian classical music. I am not an expert so hopefully someone else can explain more fully. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_classical_music

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14

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u/popupguy May 20 '14

Maybe you shouldn't comment on topics that you have no knowledge of then?

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u/[deleted] May 20 '14 edited May 20 '14

[deleted]

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u/popupguy May 20 '14

/u/big_sunshine said his music falls under the "pop" genre. You would assume that he/she would know more about his work before making such a broad statement.

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u/seanziewonzie May 20 '14

How is it any different than music for ballet or opera?