Renowned music composer A.R. Rahman wowed the audience at his ‘Unity Of Light’ concert with his repertoire of songs and an impressive line-up of entertainers. RUPA DAMODARAN writes.

THE 20,000-strong crowd at A.R. Rahman’s "Unity of Light" concert at the Shah Alam Stadium on a wet Saturday evening were too much in awe of the music composer extraordinaire to chaff at the waiting they had to endure. After all, Rahman has composed some of the best music in the Indian film industry since his success in the movie Roja in 1992.

When the orchestra started to play 1½ hours later, the crowd roared with delight and the mood continued till the show ended at about 12.45am.

They clung on to every word he said.

His humility and graciousness endeared him to his audience. He apologised for the delay, saying that "we were over confident and we did not check the waterproofing" but promptly got to work with his magical fingers playing on the keyboards and piano in between singing solo or together with some of the singers.

He delivered his best to the crowd.

He was accompanied by nine popular playback singers — S.P. Bala, Hariharan, Shankar Mahadevan, Sukhwinder Singh, Karthik, Blaaze, Vasundhra Dass, Sadhana Sargam and Sujata Bhattacharya — 20 dancers, 15 back-up singers and a 60-man strong orchestra.

The music maestro last held a concert at the same venue here in 1996. Rahman, who was honoured by his country four times, is currently on a world tour. It started early this year, and has been to the United States and Canada. His next stop is Sri Lanka.

Rahman knows how music can unite people, which is why he kept making references as to how music can be part of a "peace process", or how "peace rain can cure all this stuff happening in the world".

Thus, it was not surprising when two female singers from Uzbekhistan and Armenia sang in their respective languages. The Armenian wowed the audience when she rendered popular number Chandralekha in her language.

Rahman is already making waves in the music world elsewhere.

Rahman and Finland’s influential contemporary folk group Varttina are collaborating on the score for the stage version of the world premiere of JRR Tolkien’s classic trilogy The Lord of the Rings, which will open in the West End, London, in the spring of 2005.

Besides scoring music for Indian movies, Rahman has worked on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s West End production Bombay Dreams. He was recently chosen to create music for Chinese movie Warriors of Heaven and Earth.

If the thousands of fans that night were disappointed that he or his singers did not sing more Tamil songs, they did not show it.

He has been known to dislike any discrimination between South and North India or between the languages saying that all these barriers should be crossed.

And it was Rahman with his universally appealing tunes, who has crossed all traditional barriers in the Indian film industry and created pieces which have led to a resurgence of interest among the Indian youth today.

He was also responsible in creating cross-interest in Tamil songs in north India.

His few lines from Mustafa, Mustafa (from the movie Kadhal Desam) that night were exciting enough as were the catchy Humma, Humma and Chaiyya, Chaiyya, which got the crowd swaying.

It is no wonder that the Hindi Film industry’s first power list, commissioned by leading film magazine Filmfare and AC Nielsen ORG-Marg, named Rahman as number six in the top 10 category.

In the Music Maker category he was ranked No. 1. The current group of Indian playback singers recognises Rahman as an absolute genius and to people like Hariharan (of Colonial Cousins fame that hit the US Billboard award) and Shankar Mahadevan who have been working with fusion music, Rahman is one of the best music directors they have worked with.

Rahman has also lent a new image to Indian musical shows abroad with playback singers providing better stage presence. Except for yesteryear singer Bala, who has been in the business for 38 years, the others, together with a well-choreographed group of dancers from Mumbai, were able to excite the audience.

Sukhwinder, Karthik and Blaaze and Vasundhara (in her Shakalaka Baby number) provided the hot numbers for the energetic young to jive to.

The versatile Hariharan and the mellifluous sounding Bala, rendered Rahman’s songs from Alaypayuthey and Roja, as did Sadhana and Sujata, on the slower film or ghazal numbers.

The humble Rahman asked the audience to forgive him for any mistakes during the rendition of a song of a yet-to-be released film Meenaxi in Jaisalmer. Three songs of the film, to be shot in Hyderabad and Prague, have been tuned by Rahman. The finale were his non-film masterpieces Vande Mataram and Maa Tujhe Salaam.