Rahman at Oscar: Appreciation or Ignorance?

Our very dear, very own, A R Rahman gets three Oscar nominations in two categories. One of the nominations is for the same song for which Rahman got a Golden Globe, the golden song - Jai Ho. The thing i'm happy about is that this time Gulzar also got nominated for the song along with Rahman.

The other song in the same category of original song is o saya, which is a fine song, though not upto the level of Jai ho, or even other creations of Rahman while one counts the best of him. Still, a nomination is acceptable.

But the nomination that came more as a shock to me rather than surprise was for a category called Original Score. For slumdog millionaire, of course. This was something i did not understand. I feel that if a movie gets an award (or a nomination) for an original score, it has to have more than a few good songs. And as far as Slumdog Millionaire is concerned, i beg to differ. Slumdog is hardly one of the best original scores Rahman has produced, even with a good song like Jai ho, for which i would like to give credit to Gulzar and Sukhwinder Singh along with Rahman.

If one has a doubt about the mediocrity of the score of Slumdog, one just needs to listen to Ringa Ringa, the song which is almost a choli ke peeche, I need not write, from Khalnayak. (probably more because of the notoriousness of the song, rather than popularity)

Though, i was told by somebody that Rahman and the Slumdog team wanted to give a 90's touch to the music. But then, i suppose if it's that much inspired or has a 'touch', it can't be Original.

On the whole, the thing that troubles me the most is that Rahman has made far better songs than the soundtrack of Slumdog Millionaire, but owing to the ignorance of the 'big' people, the ones giving out all those Golden Globes and Oscars, and who never came to know about all that great music of Rahman, all awards are being given to a mediocre creation of Rahman, and I feel it's unfair to all of us Indians who know what actual Rahman is. And still, we're so happy to get all these awards. But I don't feel like celebrating the ignorance of these big people myself.

Anyway, for now I wish all the best to Rahman, because he has given us lots of lots of great music for which he deserves a lot more.

Jai Ho

I actually didn't know that the Golden Globe Award A R Rehman won was not for the entire movie but one specific song until I decided to read full story as I wanted to write something like 'Slumdog Millionaire isn't the best creation of Rehman and only a few songs could be described as great, Jai ho probably the best of them' but before I would do the mistake, I fortunately got the detail.

Jai Ho is actually one of the best creations of Rehman, even though one surely cannot say that it's better than all other songs created by him. The song is sung by Sukhwinder Singh and is full of energy like all songs of Sukhwinder, something that Golden Globe people won't know, so A Big Thanks to You Sukhwinder, for a voice so strong that almost never fails to penetrate through the walls of our hearts. Chak De!

Besides the energy packed music and lyrics, the song also has some 'background' music, a typical of A R Rehman. The background vocals, including numerous 'Jai ho' sounds are mainly sung by Rehman himself. The main female voice in the song is Mahalaxmi Iyer. Besides Hindi, the song has lyrics in Spanish too, sung beautifully (being a love language, Spanish has to be sung beautifully) by Tanvi Shah, of course an Indian, and a resident of Chennai. :)

Gulzar's lyrics are wonderful, (not as always now, as now he sometimes writes things purely with market on his mind) though I don't know who has written the Spanish part, because as far as I know Gulzar doesn't write Spanish. :)

For lyrics, you can go to inkspillz, where I got the Spanish lyrics for myself. Don't read the English translation there, as it might make you realize that Gulzar won't get a Golden Globe ever, poetry cannot be translated.

Song by Song: Marjaani (Billu Barber)

Pritam is Back. It was the first song of Billu Barber and I was listening to it for the very first time and still I could visualize the song being played on a DJ and people dancing to the tunes of Pritam once again.

Probably it's for the first time that Sukhwinder Singh is singing a Pritam's composition and the result is undoubtedly an INSTANT HIT. While Sukhwinder Singh singing for Shahrukh Khan has become a very common thing, Sukhwinder-Pritam and Shahrukh-Pritam are both quite rare combinations. In fact it's for the first time that Shahrukh Khan will be seen dancing on a song composed by Pritam and surely Pritam has given one of his best dance tracks here.

As it must have been clear by now, the song I'm talking about, 'MarJaani' is a fast dance track which comes with Pritam's trademark. The song has a few Punjabi words and some very desi lyrics like 'sochta rehta haiga' and 'sab kehte hainge'. The female voice is Sunidhi Chauhan's and she has once again been wonderful.

The song has two remix versions. One is an electro mix for which there was not a lot of scope but still there is some good mixing and the result is not bad.

The other, Kilogram Balkan mix is not actually a remix but the song sung again completely, this time by KK and Akruti Kakkar. My guess is that this song indicates Pritam's original choice of singers while Sukhwinder could have been brought in because of Shahrukh Khan as he has sung quite a number of songs in past some time, most of them hit.

This version, though sounding very good, doesn't challenge the original version of Sukhwinder/Sunidhi and will probably not be heard as much.

In any case, Marjaani is all set to blaze the dance floors. Listen, and start dancing.