This should have been a glorious celebratory party. It was Indian Independence Day and the country’s best-loved and bestselling songwriter was promising “The Greatest Hits Live”. AR Rahman has enjoyed an extraordinary career, providing soundtracks more than 100 films since the early 90s, while his Oscar-winning music for Slumdog Millionaire has brought him fame in the west. But genius in the studio doesn’t guarantee success on stage, even for such an impressive musician and singer.
Someone should have told him not to start with an embarrassing film clip praising his achievements, and not to throw away two of his most popular songs in a medley at the end of a three-hour show. The exuberant Chaiyya Chaiyya, which is accompanied by a stunning dance sequence on top of a moving train in the film Dil Se, was cut short, even though the audience were now on their feet, while Jai Ho, the Slumdog favourite, was dismissed even faster.
There was no attempt to imitate Bollywood spectacle, with just one dancer making an occasional appearance, though Rahman did constantly change his jacket. He played keyboards and accordion, and shared the lead vocals with a batch of singers including the gutsy Neeti Mohan. There were cheers when he switched between different Indian languages, and his musical approach was equally inclusive. Showing his gift for fusion, he mixed Indian themes with reggae, jazz, blues, rap and, less successfully, rock (a forgettable Naadaan Parindey from the film Rockstar). The ballads ranged from the unremarkable English-language If I Rise to the powerful Yeh Jo Des, while a welcome selection of gentle Sufi songs showed his fascination with qawwali. It was an impressively varied if patchy set, but as with Sukhwinder Singh last year, he needed a firm producer to help him bring film songs to the stage.
