by Vani Viswanathan
What does it mean to be a fan of a popular person who has changed over the years? Vani talks about her recent years as a Rahman fan who isn’t able to quite process the new things he does.
In the concert film One Heart, AR Rahman refers to his fans who were five or six years old when he released his first couple of albums, and how the Intimate Concert series (which One Heart follows) is made up of songs for these fans, now in their late 20s – his earliest fans, who grew up with his music.
It feels like he’s referring to me. This comes early on in the film, and by then I have already teared up, overwhelmed by the magic of the stage performances and Rahman talking about little things here and there. I’m watching the film over two years after its release, and after a couple of months of introspecting on what kind of a Rahman fan I am. Spotify told me my most-played songs of 2019, and Rahman tracks only came up at numbers 9 and 10. I realised with a start that I hadn’t quite enjoyed any of Rahman’s recent albums much, and hadn’t even bothered to listen to Bigil, Mersal and so on. I have started going back to his old albums, listening to them from start to finish like we used to in the days of audio cassettes. It’s ranged from Vinnaithandi Varuvaya to Highway to O Kadhal Kanmani to Delhi-6, all the way to Thiruda Thiruda, Vandicholai Chinrasu and Puthiya Mannargal. I’ve missed a straightforward, honest-to-goodness film music album from Rahman. An album whose music touched the soul and propped up the film rather than blend into the background, to be forgotten – which is how I imagine the music of Mersal and Bigil to be.
This may be the first time in my life that I’ve been disconnected from Rahman’s (new) music, and it’s induced panic in me. At the risk of idolatry, he and his music are too important to my everydays and to my life. To me, at one point, that meant knowing everything I could manage to know about all of his music. It required poring through the team credits in the audio cassettes and reading Ananda Vikatan for interviews that shared small details. That’s how I got to know Febi Mani’s story about how the high-pitch humming in the song O Maria came about, or that Sapna Awasthi is the voice behind Jinke sar ho ishq ki chaaon in Chaiyya Chaiyya. I felt proud that I was the only one I knew who had noticed that a tune that is a part of Telephone mani pol also features in Roja’s ponnu pakara scene. I believed I was one of Rahman’s most special fans.
The bubble popped when the internet slowly took over our lives and I connected with other fans who knew more than me; it was a sweet reality check – because here, I discovered much more about this man and his music, my knowledge and attention to detail helpfully sharpened by the others. As I grew older, I learnt to write about how much I enjoyed his music, and slowly the level of detail that I knew about it both reduced and grew. Reduced because I didn’t know as much anymore about who made up the team behind the music; grew because I was now listening to his music, new and old, with attention like never before: to the quiet beats in the background, to the bass, to the emotion, to those minor tweaks in tune that took his music to other levels. I soaked in New York Nagaram from Sillunu Oru Kadhal and listened to the guitar in the background with my eyes closed; I wouldn’t have listened to the songs of Blue more than once. I loved the deep longing in the voice of the singer of Ala Hada from Lekar Hum Deewana Dil. I still have no clue who he is!
By the time I was 30, I no longer knew what was going on, even though there was so much going on. Rahman was on social media, he was doing concerts regularly, he was all over the world and so was his music. I was trying to catch up desperately, making sure I didn’t miss new albums, but he was also producing new music or sharing videos from his collaborations, all at a rate that I couldn’t keep with anymore. He was in reality shows quite often – I didn’t even know which shows, these are details that I would have registered in my early 20s – and there was a whole new show ‘Harmony’ that was beautiful and I still couldn’t manage to finish watching. There were millions of fans and I was snobbish about them, thinking they weren’t there until he got national and then global (How did I know they weren’t here? I don’t!). I couldn’t associate with this person or his following anymore. Plus life and adult responsibilities had taken over, and I wasn’t starry-eyed anymore.
And that’s how I have come to my current point of confusion and a mild sense of loss of not knowing enough about his music, and of not being able to connect with him even though he’s out there a lot more than most of us have ever known.
Reading Notes of a Dream, his biography by Krishna Trilok, offered some food for thought as to why I might be feeling this way. The book was written when Rahman was engrossed in two film projects where his role went beyond the music: in 99 Songs, he is producer-co-writer and in Le Musk, he is director. Over the last many years he’s been busy with the KM Music Conservatory and, I learnt from the book, building a film studio (YM Studio) in Chennai that boasts of world-class equipment.
The book reminded me of the time I read his interviews in which he shared that he wanted to direct films. I was baffled reading about his intentions. Why did a musician want to do that?! Why did he want to go down a path that hadn’t ended well for many other artists like him who were good at one thing but were “tempted” to try film direction? I liked and “approved” (not that anyone cares for my approval, but still…) his efforts with the music school, but his admission of interest in filmmaking made me so uncomfortable. What if he failed? What would it mean to his music?
But the biography also showed me a side to him that I hadn’t bothered to take into account. Trilok brings up Rahman’s obsession with technology and with trying something new. He conveys Rahman’s deep interest in pushing the envelope and reinventing. 99 Songs and Le Musk – a full-length Virtual Reality film – are a result of this. As Imtiaz Ali and Rajeev Menon and Rahman himself talk about his desire to innovate, I realised this was a person who didn’t care much about outcomes but in doing something new – for the joy of it. I felt that I was deeply selfish in expecting such a person to stick to what they were already good at. He has taken Indian music to an extent that practically every new kid on the block today can trace his influence in their work. Rahman, then, has set newer boundaries to experiment with and reach. His not trying to do so is like constraining a spirit that’s desperate to break free and seek higher skies. How could I claim to be a fan when I thought that way?
While I do understand this side of Rahman, I’m still not sure where that puts me. My partner once talked about a football club that went through a terrible patch for many years, but whose fans stuck to them through that period, steadfast even as others moved on from supporting the down-and-out team. And years later, when the club slowly picked up their performance and reached a glorious new high – bringing in newer fans – these old-timers sat through the hoopla quietly, content that their favourite club was back to doing well; nobody needed to know that they had been their fans throughout.
Am I like these football fans? Been around for long, knowing Rahman’s earliest and some of his best work in music, and slowly getting used to the new person he’s become and the new things that he wants to do, trying to support him because he matters to me no matter what he does? They say that’s love – to be able to accept someone for who they are, without ever thinking that they should change. That’s also one of the most difficult things to do. But I suppose that to be a committed fan, that’s who I should be.
Vani Viswanathan writes fiction and non-fiction, and works on gender, sexuality and development communications in New Delhi. Her first dedicated foray into writing for the world was when she started a blog in 2005. Her writing typically focuses on the marvellous intricacies and laughable ironies in lives around her. She draws inspiration from cities she’s lived in or visited. Her writing can be accessed on www.vaniviswanathan.com.
