AR Rahman says Andrew Lloyd Webber offered him ‘Bombay Dreams’ after listening to ‘Taal’ soundtrack

The multiple award winning composer said filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, who served as an executive producer on Webber’s 2002 musical “Bombay Dreams”, played the English impresario of musical theater the soundtrack of “Taal” which clocked 25 years in August.

Rahman, who had already made a name for himself across India with Tamil films such as “Roja” and “Bombay”, said Ghai’s film helped him reach out to a whole new section of audience.

“It was the soundtrack of ‘Taal’, which Mr Kapur played to Andrew Lloyd Webber, and hearing the songs of ‘Taal’, he wanted me to work on ‘Bombay Dreams’. I was no longer called a ‘South Indian, doing only Tamil music’ and all that stuff.

“Even though ‘Roja’, and ‘Bombay’ had crossed that stuff. I also felt that there was a little more space to go into it, and ‘Taal’ perfectly filled the void. If you look at ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’, it is pure Punjabi. The confidence comes from working on all these films,” Rahman told PTI in an interview here.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a special screening of “Taal”, organized by Radio Nasha.

The composer later ventured into the international music scene, transcending geographical boundaries and captivating global audiences with his compositions in prominent productions such as Kapur’s “Elizabeth – The Golden Age”, “Couples Retreat”, “Slumdog Millionaire”, which made him the first Indian to win two Oscars, “127 Hours”, “People Like Us”, “Warriors of Heaven & Earth”, and “Million Dollar Arm”, among others.

Rahman shared another anecdote about how he went on to become a part of 1999’s “Taal”, which will be re-released in select theaters across India on September 27.

During the 1990s, the 57-year-old said everyone he said would tell him to do a Hindi film with Ghai. Rahman’s first Hindi film was 1995’s “Rangeela”, directed by Ram Gopal Varma.

“And then boom, when this fax came. I was like ‘Wow, the man himself smells the fax’. He invited me to Mumbai and we hung out.

“He talked about various aspects of my music and what I should do to learn more Hindi. We did a movie called ‘Shikhar’, which he launched but it didn’t happen. And then we did ‘Taal’,” the composer said .

“Taal”, starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Akshaye Khanna, and Anil Kapoor, continues to be widely loved for its soulful melodies like “Taal Se Taal Mila” and “Ishq Bina”, the meditative “Nahin Saamne Tu” to the electrifying dance number “Ramta Jogi”.

Creating his soundtrack didn’t take much time, said Rahman, adding the film provided him a platform to explore new dimensions in music.

“He would say, ‘I want a symphony and then I would go and do some stuff or I want this to be a mountain folk song’. So, I was like, ‘My sensibilities are also expanding’. Coming from the South, I was always open to what else is there to do.

“For instance, in ‘Roja’, I had used Hindustani ragas and not Carnatic ragas. I wanted it to have a different feel. So, I became a fan of Darbari, Bhairavi, and Des ragas, which was not common in the south of India. So, that was more on the classical side, this is more on the folk and Punjabi side,” he added.

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