AR Rahman interview: In music, whether it’s sufi or gospel or bhajan, sincerity is what matters

Ahead of his sufi music concert in Chennai, composer AR Rahman discusses what drew him to qawwalis, his mother’s death and the Oscars

At around 6 in the evening, AR Rahman excuses himself from a conversation. Inside his ARR Studios at Chennai’s Kodambakkam, the Oscar winner swiftly paces from one block to another, his mind pre-occupied, only briefly pausing to smile at a few people on the way. Clearly, the man has to be someplace soon.

Someplace is just three floors above. Here, amidst many instruments that have been played in superhit albums, is silence.

He requires that for his prayers, a time that is sacred, a time spent in solace. His assistant tells me, “It’s his prayer time. No one disturbs him for a while.”

Sometime later, the Mozart of Madras emerges from the elevator, clad in a maroon kurta and sporting a smile. The composer is in great spirits, which soften when we enquire about his son Ameen, who escaped a major accident on the sets of a song shoot a week ago. Rahman says, “He is shaken. He tells me, ‘Appa, I can’t sleep well. I feel that the fan might fall on me’.”

As we wait for the interview to begin, Rahman hums a line from ‘Adiye Sonali’, a one-minute independent music video launched by his son in January. Good things await Ameen; he has also sung a song in upcoming Simbu-starrer, Tamil film Pathu Thala under his father’s composition.

Good things also await Rahman. He is gearing up for a concert in Chennai this weekend, but it will be very different from the head-banging, familiar rhythms that draw huge crowds for his every live performance. At Wings of Love, scheduled this Sunday evening at Nehru Indoor Stadium, the composer will perform a “Sufi concert”. “There will be no ‘Muqqabula’ or ‘Chaiya Chaiya’, but “there will be numbers like ‘Kun Faya Kun’,” he informs. “I wanted to do a bigger concert but that couldn’t happen. However, I realised there are many fans for numbers like ‘Kun Faya Kun’ and ‘Khwaja Mere Khwaja’, and thus we have this.” This concert is to raise awareness and in aid of the ‘Save Lightman’ fund, to recognise lightmen working in various film industries. “We’ll get a blessing from everyone that way.”

This is AR Rahman the Oscar-winner talking, but in the late Eighties, he was a just boy named AS Dileep Kumar. So, when did he get drawn to the world of sufi music? “I was not a fan of qawwali,” he admits candidly, “In 1991, a friend of mine, Sarangan, introduced me to a record of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and I was like, ‘Who is this? What is this music?’ It changed my whole paradigm of thinking. Later, I met Nusrat and learnt a few lessons, but then he passed away. Then, Khalid Mohammed came to me and said that he wanted a song like ‘Muqqabula’. I didn’t want to do that yet again, but learnt that he was planning a qawwali, and I wanted to do that.”