AR Rahman has been away from the studio for a while now, promoting his film One Heart and visiting different cities in India and overseas for his One Heart tour. Recently, he shared a video announcing that he would be performing in Canada on 20 and 21 October, and one of the most striking details about these concerts is that one of them will be exclusively in Hindi, and the other, exclusively in Tamil.
AR Rahman. Image courtesy CNN News18
This decision seems to have been motivated by the observation that the audience which listens to music in these languages is mutually exclusive. Rahman even jokes about this at the end of the video, encouraging the Hindi audience to attend the Tamil concert and vice versa.
While many listeners and cine-goers in India may only be exposed to the songs he has created for Bollywood films, the composer has also earned a name for himself in the Tamil film industry, regularly composing music for directors like Mani Ratnam. This is what led to considerable dissatisfaction on the part of attendees at his latest concert in Wembley; people were put off when he started playing his Tamil songs.
In an interview to Firstpost, Rahman addressed this issue, calling it a common occurrence. "It does happen often, it has been happening for 17 years now, since I began performing in the US, where the crowd is a mix of cultures. If you have an audience of 10,000 people, there will definitely be 50 people who will point out things like this. But you have to consider the logistics of the concert — if you want a big concert, you need everyone to support you. I don’t let such criticism affect me, because I have to look at the bigger picture," he said.
Watch the promo video of his Canada concerts here:
Published Date: Oct 10, 2017 08:46 pm | Updated Date: Oct 10, 2017 08:53 pm
