While AR Rahman may dislike titles given to him such as the Mozart of Madras or the Beethoven of Bollywood, his fans feel that he deserves such recognition for his work. The exemplary musician, whose mantelpiece bears the weight of six National Film Awards, two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and the Padma Bhushan, has countless fan clubs and tribute bands, but this one stands out for its innovation.
The Mozart of Madras band comprises vocalists Ashutosh Joshi and Rama Kulkarni, guitarists Kirit Mandavgane and Amit Gadgil, keyboardist Ninad Solapurkar and drummer Rohan Vanage, who have been brought together by the founder and music producer of the group Vaibhav Deo. “What makes us different is that we take some of the popular tracks by AR Rahman and make it our own. We don’t perform the song like you’ve heard it several times before, we spice it up with our own compositions and innovation,” says Deo who owns an event company. “When we used to manage events, we would hire different bands to come and play. One day we thought it will be better if we had our own band. We wanted to form a band that would perform songs that people of our generation will know and love. We wanted to make a tribute band, we thought of people like Madan Mohan and Kishore Kumar, but we were looking for a living legend of our generation, so A R Rahman was the best choice,” says he.
Deo says that the plan to form the band started in 2014 and a year later, after many rehearsals to sound just perfect, they were ready for their debut performance.
The band will be performing at Pheonix Marketcity this Sunday. “We have selected songs by Rahman that everyone knows very well. We want the audience to connect to our songs,” says Deo justifying their decision to tweak tried-and-tested content rather than to create brand new material. “We rearrange the songs to the best of our capabilities, but we are wary not to change the feel of the song,”he adds.
Their opening act is a seamless medley of three of Rahman’s (arguably) greatest compositions — Mausam and Escape from Slumdog Millionaire, Khalbali from Rang De Basanti, and Taal Se Taal Mila from Taal. “Though Mausam and Escape isn’t a ‘song’ as such, it is an instrumental composition he made for the film, that shows his genius as a composer and a musician. We also have pop culture iconic hits like Jiya Jale from Dil Se in our set,” says he.
The band’s set doesn’t only feature Hindi tracks, but includes favourites from down south as well. “The song Hello Mr Edirkatchi is a very popular song from the Tamil film by Mani Ratnam titled Iruvar. It has a jazz feel to it. Since the band members are Maharashtrians, singing in South Indian languages is difficult — it is out of their comfort-zone. Even when we perform his compositions from the south film industries, we make sure that we add Hindi lyrics so that the audience can connect. Most of the times, we sing only one verse in Tamil and the rest of the song in Hindi,” says Deo.
While the musical maestro had to deal with some serious flak after his Wembley concert last year, which left attendees disappointed because his set included a number of non-Hindi songs which they did not know or relate to, the band plays it safe by including just one non-Hindi track in their set. “A R Rahman entered the Hindi music industry after he did some work in the south film industries. Roja was first made in Tamil and then in Hindi, where he made his debut as a music director. According to us, he is equally good in making music in south Indian languages and in Hindi. But I think he is inclined towards Tamil because it is his mother tongue,” he says, adding that he is not aware whether the musical legend knows about their existence or not.
During the performance, you will find that the songs are linked to each other through a script.
ST Reader Service
Mozart of Madras will perform at Liberty Square, Phoenix Marketcity, Viman nagar, on November 11, 7.30 pm
