Are you a Rahmaniac?

As regular readers of this blog would know, I am crazy about the music of A R Rahman [1]. A random phone conversation with a friend a few days ago revealed to me that I actually know too much trivia about the guy and his music. So, find below a few random facts from the early years of this musical superstar (early years being pre Rangeela and Bombay, after which he stopped being the exclusive property of us Tamil folks). Interspersed with these random facts are a few questions for you. If you can answer all of them, then you must be a fellow Rahmaniac as well! [2]

Let us start with a classic:

While you listen to it, let me tell you something about it. Legend has it that when Mani Ratnam first talked to Rahman about the possibility of them working together on Roja, this was the music that Rahman played for him, having composed this some time earlier.

Now to Question 1: Do you know the first movie that Rahman committed to as a music director?

Next, we all know that Rahman was doing ad jingles before he started his movie career. Here is an ad from his early days.

This was the first time Arvind Swamy was featured in a work that had music by ARR. Now Question 2: Can you name three other instances? Everybody can name two for sure. A not so helpful hint: The following song is one of the lesser known ones in a candidate for the third album, but I like it a lot. Do you?

Moving on, after very urban scores in Roja, his second tamil release Pudhiya Mugham, ARR came up with this album that was so ethnic Tamil that it surprised everyone. Here is one of the lesser known songs from this album. Question 3 : Can you name the album?

He has subsequently come up with a whole bunch of such songs of course; Karuthamma and Sangamam come to mind when thinking along these lines.

Next, here is one more lesser known song by my man. It is still on my all time favorite list after all these years.

Question 4 for you: Can you name the movie? Hint : The movie had Ajith in it and if I remember correctly, the thalai actually dies in the movie!

Finally, deviating from my early Rahman theme, this song, composed slightly later in his career is one of my really really favorite songs that somehow many people do not remember.

Do you think it is good? Question 5 for you: Can you name the movie? Hint : This album features one song in which Apache Indian is credited as co-composer, the video of which is below:

[1] Those reading by feed : a) This post is an anomaly. So feel free to ignore it. Also, there are music pieces embedded in the post that might not show up in your reader.

[1] Without the aid of google of course. With google, we are all experts in everything, are n’t we?