A.R. Rahman and the aesthetic transformation of Indian film scores

Abstract

Orchestral scores in Hindi cinema have been virtually ignored both by fans and scholars: they have received little attention from Indian music and film critics and are only infrequently a subject for commentary. Despite the lack of respect for film scores, however, music director A.R. Rahman carefully crafted his scores to generate musical narratives that operate in tandem with film narratives. In order to illustrate how Rahman’s film scores of the late 1990s and early 2000s marked an inflection point for background music in later Indian films, this article compares the background scores of the films Taal (1999) and Swades (2004). The article traces the development of musical themes in these films and Rahman’s later shift in compositional approach, suggesting that later composers in mainstream and hatke cinema deployed new tactics in their film scores, such as the development of musical themes unrelated to the song melodies composed for the film. These changes in background scoring practices provide new incentives for audiences to attend to musical sound in the narrative, heralding the commercial success of multiplex films of the 2010s, even as they blurred the boundaries between film song and film score.