He's enabled Indian music to move onto the international stage.
A R Rahman winning the Golden Globe for his music for Slumdog Millionaire is probably the most significant thing to have happened to the music industry in India in a long time. Not that there haven’t been any commercial or even creative successes by way of Indian pop or film music, it’s just that none of them have managed to gain the attention of the entertainment world like Rahman has with this film score. And rightly so, as there is no other Indian composer more deserving of recognition than Rahman, whose prolific work and often inspiring talent has been largely overlooked by the entertainment world’s international mainstream.
Still, it is hard to overlook the fact that Rahman’s teaming up with the famous and celebrated director Danny Boyle to make the music for something of an adventure thriller set in one of the most closely watched developing cities in the world must have had an influence on the Golden Globe committee’s decision to even nominate him in the same category as other film music heavyweights like Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. But despite this, we in South Asia, at least, know of Rahman’s brilliant crossover potential as both an artist and a composer, and know that if anyone was to be given an international award like this, no one would or could have been a better choice.
Many people have been looking at Rahman’s winning the award as something of a national achievement and in terms of Indian music and its artistes being put on the world map. While getting the Golden Globe is something of an achievement for India, it is so only because it’s the first time that an Indian has won such an award. Other than that, the fact is that Indian music has been on the world map for a while now, through bhangra and Bollywood music, and even more prominently through classical and fusion music that have often been awarded Grammys.
But, while international audiences listen to different types of music from India, only an award like this, a Golden Globe, accelerates the rate at which Indian music is consumed by fans worldwide, and in doing so exposes it to an even larger audience than before. And, as an early indication of how the music from Slumdog Millionaire has cut through to international audiences, I was pleasantly surprised to find a review of the film’s music on Pitchforkmedia.com, a hugely popular and influential American music website dedicated to cutting-edge, quality music, and feared for its brutally honest reviews of albums from around the world. The music from Slumdog Millionaire was, surprisingly, good enough to receive a 7.4/10 rating which, on Pitchforkmedia, is nothing short of an achievement.
And so it would probably be safe to agree with Shankar Mahadevan, who says that the future does look good from here, referring to the Indian music industry after this award win. But all of the hype aside (including Wikipedia listing Rahman as the sixth highest-selling artist of all time and MIA referring to him as “the Indian Timbaland”, even though we know Rahman’s better), now that the door’s been opened there is absolutely nothing stopping Indian music from walking straight out onto the international stage and conquering it.
