Documentary 'Jai Ho' tracks Rahman’s musical journey

Mine is an un-radical, spiritual approach to music. I just give – give with love and purity, says the Mozart of Madras.

When singer Alka Yagnik asked her colleague Kumar Sanu about the little-known A.R. Rahman, little did she know that he would become one of the greatest musicians India has produced. That was early 1992, when both the singers were at their peak and could afford to refuse music composers they didn’t have confidence on. “But, after I heard Roja ’s songs, which became chartbusters within a month, I felt like banging my head against the wall. It was a big loss.” This honest confession comes from Yagnik in Jai Ho , a docu-drama made on music maestro A.R. Rahman that was screened at Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre on Tuesday.

A Public Service Broadcasting Trust Production with the Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, the film directed by Umesh Aggarwal has several such moments of honesty, doubts, admissions, larger-than-life scenarios entwined with the music that Rahman is synonymous with. Totally, an admirer’s account, Jai Ho is a 90-minute film that revolves around Rahman’s musical journey touching just peripherally his personal life — loss of his father, his conversion to Islam, mother’s ambition to see him as a musician, marriage, life post-marriage and so on.

As expected of any film on the international star,

Jai Ho chronicles Rahman through his masterpieces that made him a household name and also the making of those pieces in his studio. From Subash Ghai, Mani Ratnam, Gulzar and Shekhar Kapoor to Danny Boyle and Andrew Llyod Webber, the film is dotted with the accounts of these film-makers on Rahman.

Gulzar’s appreciation of the maestro? “The drums and pakhawaj in other music director’s creations get so mixed up that one cannot tell the distinct beats from one another, but with A.R., they can be heard separately. It delights the ears and imparts respect to the instrument players.”

“If it is not busting the charts, it can’t be AR,” is Shekhar Kapoor’s opinion. Rahman scored music for Kapoor’s Hollywood film Elizabeth .

Director Danny Boyle for whom Rahman composed the music for

Slumdog Millionaire with Resul Pukkotty, reveals, “It fetched him an Oscar. And they don’t give Oscar to a music composer. So it was a serious decision.”

Andrew Webber chips in, “Rahman’s music in Bombay Dreams (with which he went global) threw American critics out of gear. His music is way ahead of time. It’s real worth would be gauged in 30 to 40 years from now.”

Rahman’s reaction? “Mine is an un-radical, spiritual approach to music. I just give – give with love and purity.”

Umesh Aggarwal took two years to complete the film as he shot in the U.K., U.S., Chennai, Mumbai and other spaces. Among PSBT’s most expensive films so far, Jai Ho could be a five-hour film with the “kind of footage we had”, says Aggarwal adding, So, we cut it into 60 and 90 minutes for international and national audiences, respectively. His mother has appeared in a film for the first time. We used Rahman’s studio and several unmixed sound tracks he had, to make sure the sound track of the film matched his stature.”

Says Rahman on the docu-drama, “Look, I have some out-of-the-world shots and I wanted to make a film with it. If I had shared those shots, the film would have gone several notches up. The best, however, was that they managed to surpass my personal life and interviewed so many international icons…” he leaves the sentence half way.

A man of few words, as Rahman is, “giving with love and purity” was proved.