Tell us more about — the film and the project itself.
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There is no music without heart. No true music at least. I think I wanted that heart to be in the title of my film somewhere. As some of the kids I met in Dubai said, ‘Let the message of one heart spread to a thousand millions hearts.’ That thought is so beautiful. One person can change the world.
One Heart is also the name of my foundation. One Heart: The AR Rahman Concert Film is now showing in the UAE. Rahman’s, Ranjit Barot and Haricharan Seshadri in Dubai.
There are so many unsung heroes in the world of music. Unfortunately, we live in times where people remember the music, but fail to recognise the musician.
I know of a tabla player whose family has been playing tabla for three generations, but nobody has heard of them.
I have seen many musicians like that. You realise they know nothing else but music, but they don’t know how to secure themselves or their future.
You will see them in hospitals, but they won’t have money for medications. It is all very disheartening.
Through my One Heart foundation, I am trying to rehabilitate and raise funds for them, their families and thus [ensure] that the study of music doesn’t die off. How does this film tie into the project itself?
This project took a different shape from what I actually wanted. I had something else in mind, something bigger, but then it became so big that it never even started. What I had in mind was a huge concept-based TV show. But then my producer wanted to do something else. He said, ‘Why don’t you release your concert tour as a movie?’
This is an experiment at the end of the day. Let’s see how this works out.
The film follows your travels across the US, as you tour with a band of musicians. What makes this tour so special?
There was a time when we were told…before it used to be ‘okay, they want this song, so this is the song we play’. It [the tour] used to be a production, an extravaganza. But here, on this particular US tour, things were more intimate. I could actually see people.
If somebody at the concert was on Facebook, we would stop the show and say, ‘okay you finish what you are doing and we will wait’. We used to try all these pranks. We could literally see the joy in their eyes. And music wise, this was probably the first time I walked on to the stage with no butterflies.
I was like my band is here. I want to play; I want to sing. And I felt no jitters, nothing. It was like going to my studio. It was that kind of feeling.
Two years from now, it won’t be the same set-up. Maybe there will be other members in this band, or the musicians may go on somewhere else. In 2000, our show in the US had Sonu Niigam, Sukhwinder Singh, Udit Narayan and Shankar Mahadevan. Can I do that now? No, I can’t. I never documented that, so I felt like now was the time to document something. There may not be money but there’s a lot of satisfaction in a smaller, intimate setting.
An intimate setting could also perhaps make it a little easier for people to voice their satisfaction and their dissatisfaction rather than staging a walkout as they did in Wembley. As an artist, do these things bother you?
People who really know me, especially in the US, know that I have been doing this from year 2000, since I played my first show for the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. A couple of people in the press wrote, ‘oh, he sang this, he sang that’. But then it all settled down. Following this, they [fans] were mentally prepared, saying, ‘this guy is like this and we love him for it’.
That’s where I really felt the integration of India. Any second thought I had which told me that I should only sing in one language went off by seeing their support. That was so impactful that [during the tour] we would start the show by saying thanks for representing a united India.
After we hear you are also working to release your virtual reality film, which also marks your debut as a film director.
Le Musk, again, did not start very seriously but become serious along the way. This one-hour, threeepisode film is about music of course, but it is also a murder mystery. The movie should be ready in a couple of months. But we are still figuring out how audiences will see this virtual reality film. We are looking into teaming up with different cities to host an experience centre.
After 25 years in the industry and several achievements to your credit, what can you hope for in the coming 25 years?
[Laughs] Ha, 25 years! I don’t know where I would be next month. I know the path…this foundation. I am working towards a purpose and [for] once can’t be complacent.