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Jaipur swings to Rahman’s beats

MUSIC GENIUS: A. R. Rahman

JAIPUR: The Pink City experienced the A. R. Rahman magic live for the first time on Friday evening when the singer-composer kept a large audience spellbound for two hours at Amroodon Ka Bagh.

The dust kicked up by an afternoon storm which brought down festival arches and festoons hung along Janpath for the ongoing week-long “Rajasthan Diwas” celebrations got settled by evening as placid winds blew but the maestro unleashed another storm.

The Rahman avalanche hit the captive audience hard, mesmerising and carrying it to the realms of ecstasy.

Once he got started, the soft-spoken, shy artiste was a transformed man. In fact it was about this starting trouble that he was talking about the previous day when he met journalists.

A. R. Rahman may be among the world’s 25 top-selling recording artistes and the only one from India in that list, but he confessed that he still gets butterflies in his stomach when he steps on to the stage to perform. Yet this was not the reason for his rare appearances on stage.

“Till I get on to the stage, it is terrifying. Thereafter the situation improves,” he said. Accompanied by well-known drummer Sivamani and singer Sadhana Sargam, he said the ground support always helped the situation to improve: “As such I am scared of performing. But once I start, the response from the public also helps to improve things.”

He said the reason for his rare appearances on stage, especially in North India, was his preoccupation with music at Panchathan, his recording studio in Chennai. Also he is going to take up additional work in teaching music to budding talents by setting up a music conservatory in Chennai in June.

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