The maestro’s dream

On October 23 and 24, 2014, A.R. Rahman visited the city of Boston to receive an honorary degree in music. I got a chance to interview him as well as numerous members of the Berklee Indian Ensemble, who put on a tribute performance at Boston Symphony Hall.

This article below published in the November 7, 2014 issue of India Abroad as the issue’s magazine feature. To check out the article on the India Abroad platform, click here.

What was it like to interview A.R. Rahman? Check out my personal reflection here.

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A.R. Rahman magazine feature in India Abroad (November 7, 2014).

The city of Boston got a glimpse into the psyche of one of the most prolific and celebrated composers of our time this past week, as the Berklee College of Music awarded A.R. Rahman an honorary doctorate of music and organized multiple events where he headlined, all culminating to a Friday night concert tribute by the Berklee Indian Ensemble and the Berklee World Strings.

“I was a bit sad that my family couldn’t come,” Rahman told the sold-out crowd of 2625 at Symphony Hall as he accepted the degree. “My mother isn’t well … and my wife—her mom died. So it’s great to see you all. It’s like my whole family is here—my whole musical family.”

And for two days, it felt like the Maestro of Madras—who has inspired millions of people around the world since he first broke onto the scene in 1992 with the Roja soundtrack—had come to life before our eyes, sharing the honest and unfiltered inner workings of his musical mind.

On October 23 and 24, the Grammy- and Oscar-winning composer spent time with the Berklee community, attending a variety of events in his honor: his tribute concert’s raw rehearsal; an open-admission Master Class led by a panel of Berklee faculty where students, parents, and long-time fans alike could ask Rahman their most burning questions; and a critique class where Berklee students shared film scenes they scored specifically for the composer’s feedback.

“It’s the first time we’re able to work with somebody of his stature,” Annette Philip, the Berklee Indian Ensemble artistic director who was instrumental in getting Rahman to the musical institution, told India Abroad on the night of the rehearsal. “We’re so, so excited.”

The initiative took shape via the Berklee India Exchange, a program founded last year with the goal of bringing high-profile artists to the college to interact first-hand with students.

“It’s like an onstage mentorship that goes on,” Philip said. “The artists come here for a residency; they immerse themselves in the classes; they critique some of our students’ compositions. We build a rapport between a high-profile artist and a student who’s aspiring towards the heights they’ve reached. Those are relationships that don’t get so easily formed if you just try to meet in an industry setting.”

But Rahman was quick to shine the attention away from him.

“Now I’ve got a great team,” he said. “I tell myself, ‘There are great musicians standing with you—better do something worthy.’”

Speaking with the doting crowd in his Master Class at the Berklee Performance Center, the musical composer for films such as Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours attributed a lot of his creative process to spirituality.

“I got exposed to the spiritual world a lot earlier, and I worked with a lot of old people. Even now, their voices keep encouraging me: ‘Do more melody; remove the clutter; make it peaceful; make it more beautiful.’ Though they’re all gone, their voices keep me going.”

For Rahman, humility seemed a big part of his day-to-day philosophy.

“I learn from everyone. Learning should never stop—not only from music but from life,” he said. He encouraged putting one’s ego aside to channel creativity. “See how much energy you can get from divinity or nature or the universe. The moment you don’t exist, you’re unlimited. The moment you say I’m going to do this, you’re limited.”

TIME recently called Rahman the “world’s most prolific and popular composer,” but the winner of 15 FilmFare Awards, 4 National Film Awards, as well as a Golden Globe is not immune to self-doubt.

“There was a period where I thought, All the music in me has been exhausted. I won’t be able to compose anything else,” he said. “I was very sure that nothing was going to come.”

So, where does Rahman look for material during times of difficulty?

“I think you should be proud of your own identity,” he said. “You have it within you. Most of us get confused. Get inspired by other cultures—but represent your own country.”

So, for Rahman, being open to explore new cultures but staying true to one’s own self is key. Think back to Vaande Mataram—Rahman’s 1997 tribute album to India on the country’s 50^th anniversary of its independence. The title track took lines from India’s national anthem to create a fresh interpretation of the sentiment of patriotism. It now holds a Guinness World Record for being the song performed in the most number of languages (277).

“He goes against the tradition of Bollywood, mixing both Bollywood and Western music,” Adriel Tjokrosaputro, 22, a bass vocalist in the Berklee Indian Ensemble who performed at the tribute concert, said. “That’s what I really like about him. He’s not afraid to be different, but he’s not disrespecting his own culture.”

Rahman’s mass appeal and ability to congeal various styles—Indian classical, orchestral, electronic, and world music, for instance—have resulted in his working with luminaries as diverse as Andrew Lloyd Webber, L. Shankar, Mick Jagger, Iggy Azalea, and Michael Bolton so far. So, how does one collaborate with such a diverse group of personalities to produce art? Via “the commonality of human nature within all of us,” he says.

“We all dress differently, speak differently—but those common emotions are the same. Happiness, sadness, excitement, spirituality—whatever you feel. If you take that and connect, it’s all possible. You have to keep your mind open.”

Rahman attributes one of the most influential people in his life to be legendary director Mani Ratman of Roja fame, who altered the composer’s musical mind, still taking shape back in the 1990s.

“As a musician, you always think of chords and melody. And then Mani Ratman came into my life,” Rahman said. “That was life changing. I learned a lot from him from a director’s perspective of how to look at music: not just chords … but what you create in the back of the scene.”

He said that the director changed his whole approach to composing. With each new project from then on, he would ask himself, “What would Mani Ratman think?’”

But on October 24 at Symphony Hall, it was Rahman’s night. The Berklee Indian Ensemble and the Berklee World Strings group nailed the tribute concert with flawless arrangements of Rahman favorites from Dil Se, Roja, Taal, and Guru. Commanding bass drums, gripping vocal solos, and cascading sitar and violin chords shook the 110-year-old hall in downtown Boston for two hours.

“When I heard a couple of songs, I felt like, ‘Wait, did I do that?’” Rahman said with smiling admiration of the student ensemble as he accepted his doctorate.

At one point in the evening, the Boston University dance team BU Bhangra stormed through the aisles and performed an ebulliently choreographed routine to the title song from the 2005 film Rang De Basanti.

The night also featured an awe-inspiring, energetic solo by 18-year-old prodigy bass player Mohini Dey, who has previously shared the stage with Rahman, and jazzy riffs by guru guitarist Prasanna, a ’99 Berklee graduate.

Tickets for this concert were sold for as high as $10,000 each. Proceeds will be used to fund the college’s newly established A.R. Rahman Scholarship. The annual award will help aspiring young musicians in India attend Berklee to build their artistic careers.

“I missed the whole college thing,” Rahman said. “I didn’t have that. There was a studio [near] a college in Bombay. Just to experience it, I would walk past the students to go to that studio and work.”

He reflected on the crossroads he faced back in the early 90s, when Mani Ratman approached him to score Roja, an opportunity that came his way around the time he was accepted to Berklee. At that very beginning point in his career, Rahman chose Roja to introduce himself to the world.

“But the circle of life is such a beautiful thing, because today I’m here at Berklee and it’s getting completed,” he said.

And so it was a couple of days of immense knowledge sharing and at times poignant reflection, not just for Rahman but others in the crowd.

Berklee alumnus Ali Rapetti, an MT-BC certified music therapist who also plays the guitar and sings, shared a story with Rahman at the Master Class about her experience working clinically with an 8-year-old Indian girl living in Massachusetts who had fallen ill.

“I didn’t know at the time that I had met her in the last two months of her life,” Rapetti said. “We were using music clinically to just help her calm her issues, as she was in a very bad state. She was barely responsive to the world and she was in so much pain—it was very difficult to reach her.”

“So, I’m thinking, what is this Italian girl from Florida going to do to help, right?” Rapetti said, referring to herself. “But thankfully Annette [Philip] taught me ‘Tera Bina’—and about eight or nine other songs that I could do somewhat convincingly. And I went in there and sang—and she had gone from crying to just absolutely calm and so serene.”

Rapetti went on: “And during the [chorus] she started bouncing a little bit. And I looked up and I saw that her mom had tears in her eyes, and she said, ‘Not only do we know that song, but this is her very favorite song.’”

Under Philip’s direction and mentorship, the Berklee Indian Ensemble has really burgeoned to the buoyant powerhouse of talent that it is today. Since she cofounded the group in 2011, the ensemble has attracted and represented musical talent from 37 countries.

Bass vocalist Tjokrosaputro, originally from Surakarta, Indonesia, decided he wanted to be a part of the group when he heard them perform a medley of A.R. Rahman songs back in 2012.

“It was amazing. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” he said.

In preparation for the tribute concert, he reflected on a desire to learn the context of each Rahman song as somebody who is not a native Hindi or Tamil speaker.

“There’s a bit of nervousness, especially because I’m not Indian,” he said. “It’s not just about translating it to English; it doesn’t work that way. There’s some sense of energy or unity that we have to have while performing the songs that I’m trying to absorb.”

With the ensemble, Philip’s goal is to “help nurture the next generation of singers, songwriters, composers, or global musicians. I feel like education is not just about the academics but also about helping them to see what their options are going to be going out into the real world where it’s not so sheltered,” she said.

And now, the ensemble has become a tightly knit community. Members “know what kind of food everybody likes; they know who doesn’t like to be hugged and who needs hugs. We try to maintain a family vibe,” she said.

Harini Srinivasa Raghavan, 28, originally of Chennai, plays the violin and sings in the ensemble. At Berklee, she is studying electronic production and design.

“I grew up listening to [Rahman’s] music,” she said. “He has really revolutionized the music industry in India in general. From the sound design aspect, every sound that you heard in Roja was so fresh. No one had heard anything like that before.”

Raghavan, who originally earned her degree in software engineering and worked as an engineer in her early 20s, quit her job to pursue her musical aspirations. She now sings and plays in two bands.

These are the kinds of decisions that Rahman hopes to support through his advocacy for scholarship and music education. He also hopes that the negative mindset some Indian parents carry about children pursuing careers in music needs to change. After all, it was something his own mother encouraged fully in him when she told him to quit school and seek musical opportunities.

“She knew my life better than me,” Rahman said wistfully. “I respect her so much.”

“I really hope the scholarship inspires something great. There are so many bright people who are dreaming to come [to Berklee] not only because of education but because of exposure to the whole new culture,” Rahman told India Abroad. “I feel that the right, worthy students should come—and then give back to India.”

Rahman said that, at the music school he founded in Chennai, the KM Music Conservatory [KMMC], he hopes to be able to replicate a similar experience of the immersion of urban culture.

“In India, we don’t have this; it’s just—you come out [of the school], and it’s clutter. This can only happen if you live here; it’s beautiful.”

In order to help his cause, he’s hoping to eventually make KMMC a place as prestigious as schools such as Julliard or Berklee.

But he’s not stopping there. He spoke excitedly of his next big project—something that came to him while ruminating on a long flight where he contemplated “what could be the next level to music in India.”

“Things can never change unless you change them [yourself],” he said.

So he has decided to be that catalyst: He wrote a movie script, which we will hear more about in the next year or two—a coming-of-age film about “self-discovery” as a musician.

He believes that the movie format is a more powerful medium for the message he hopes to convey.

“When a great song comes through a movie, it reaches many more people,” he told India Abroad. “So, why lose that instrument? I have both now: I have the movie engine and I have this vision to do music. So I want to combine both engines and see what else is going to happen.”

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What’s it like to meet A.R. Rahman as a fan? Check out my first-hand experience of the interview here.

Simanta Roy Buck tweets @simmyroy