Rahul Raj draws the curtains in the room with a flourish and asks, “Did you expect to see this here?” The glass windows reveal a dense patch of greenery. In an apartment at Palarivattom behind the national highway, surrounded by buildings, the greenery does seem like a well-kept secret.
Music director Rahul rented out the space as a studio as soon as he discovered it. “There comes a point when you hit the ceiling. That’s when all these elements come in, the earth, the trees, the sand….” Born in Mamangalam, Rahul says this connection to Nature is woven deeply into his psyche as a musician.
His ‘studio’ room has a large keyboard, computers and speakers, and a bed. “I will never feel at home inside a conventional studio. I need to be able to see a bit of greenery. I need a space where I can sleep, where my assistants can hang around, where a lot of work can happen without labouring over it,” he says.
However, the mental climate is as important. “Every artist’s mind has a default setting. I tune mine to happiness. I try to be at peace with myself and the environment so that it translates to music.” Though he says making music is an high-intensity cranial activity, his creative process does not follow a structured format. Excessive planning does not always work, he feels and he does not also look for the most ideal conditions to work. “I just ensure I have the energy to work. Oh, and I have uninstalled the FB app from my phone. The internet could be a distraction.”
Rahul began learning Carnatic music when he was seven; a natural thing for someone born into a musically-inclined family. “Music was always there and I wanted desperately to make a career out of it,” he says. But we are talking of the dawn of the millennium when opportunities in the industry weren’t as easy for those who did not have the “right contacts”. Rahul, who had completed his IT engineering, left for London, where he worked as a network specialist for a U.K.-based company. “It was so not what I wanted to do,” he says. However, he kept his music alive by attending the Morley College where he did a year’s diploma in Electronic Music Production. “I took the evening classes. Then it dawned on me that if I didn’t take a decision, my musical sojourn would end rather unceremoniously.”
Four months into 2016, Rahul already has 11 projects on hand including Mammootty’s White , Gokul Suresh’s Muthugavu , the Jayasurya-starrer Inspector Dawood Ibrahim, Manju Warrier’s Karinkunnam Sixes and Prithviraj’s Ezra in addition to two Telugu projects. His formal entry into Malayalam cinema was with Chotta Mumbai in 2007. Several offers came his way, but the pace was slow. “I was in a good space, very comfortable doing two to three films per year. I was enjoying my breaks. But it is now that I realise the potential of the human brain,” he laughs. “I am enjoying being busy.”
While he is not working, he is listening to music. “It is like feeding your brain constantly. The more you listen, the wider is your palette,” he says. His romantic number Hemandhamen for the Asif Ali film Kohinoor, whichstill tops the charts in the genre, was a labour of love. “I did my research for that one. What if I were transported to the 80s in a time capsule…that was the way I thought. It was a kind of remodelling of Ilayaraja, Ouseppachan, Shyam and Johnson melodies. What they would have done with the kind of instruments at their disposal. I worked on that song for about a month.” Inspiration comes from these masters. Having done plenty of fast numbers, Rahul draws equal or more appreciation for his melodies.
He has sung a couple of his songs (‘Venal Kaatil’ in Ritu, ‘Thala’ in Chotta Mumbai, Kili poyi ), and he prefers to sing to his singers rather than play the tune on the keyboard. “The singers are the voice of a song, I would like to believe I pick mine well,” he says. A mridangam player as well, Rahul is currently learning Western classical music. “I want to conduct a real orchestra. That has been a long time dream and I am working on it.”
For Rahul, a good piece of music is about making soul connections with the right people. “I want to be part of a tribe that believes in pure art, that won’t settle for mediocrity.”
