AR Rahman's concert @ Dayton

Note: This blog is huuuuuuuuge.. Read only if you have the time!

After weeks of waiting... after fighting with Ali for the tickets... after coaxing people to come along, finally there I was at Trent Arena, the evening of 22nd April, certain I was going to witness a genius in action and nothing could go wrong... I was fully prepared for a musical treat and there was certainly no way I could be disappointed. This was a Rahman concert and I almost worshipped him and his genre of music was exactly my taste and I have heard practically every piece of music that he's composed and released to the public. Understandably, the adrenaline was high and the anticipation higher...

We wove our way to our seats which were at some 60 degree angle to the mainstage.. which wasnt so bad.. given that the audi was quite small and that the stage wasnt tooo far.. So all settled in, I couldnt wait for it all to unveil.. And sometime after 7.45pm, we saw the musicians file on stage.. Obviously Rahman was nowhere to be seen.. He had to make a dramatic entry after all...

It then started when this Amru babe held the mic and started crooning these Indian sounding tones... After a few moments, it descended on me when she sang -"mey pee yaya mey pee aaya.. mey puhrem puhyala pee aaya". It sounded to me like she wanted to pee.. And I wondered why she was announcing it in something like Hindi to the audience when it struck me... It was the Ramta Jogi beginning from Taal!!! I was amused and joined the rest of the audience in clapping... The song started and was entirely sung by a group of 100 kids standing in a bleacher kind of setting at the back of the stage... It was an even mix of girls n boys, desis n amrus n other nationalities I couldnt place.. And it sounded ok... I mean, they were giving these Miami university kids a chance to do some big-audience thing and it was nice to see n hear the whole song in an accent... I could handle it... The song was received with thunderous applause.. Then some dude came in and said a few things... none of which we could hear very clearly... But the last part was enough... "Without further ado, please welcome the musical genius, A.R.Rahman". This bought the entire crowd of 2000 odd to our feet as we cheered him on stage. He looked tiny n nice in a white Jodpuri as he took his natural place on centerstage and I was soo thrilled just to be there... He spoke a few soft undiscernable words and launched into kalbali from Rang de Basanti... Its not one of my favorites.. But then again, just hearing his voice out there in front of me was thrill enough and surely the rest of the evening remained for him to sing my favorite songs... Or so I thought...

If I launched into an in-depth narration of the exact sequence of songs that were 'played' (I will get to that) and the range of my emotions through each of them, I am sure Blogger will give me their version of the 'Orkut donut' n ask me to take a walk (in decent words) to waste much coveted webspace!! So, I am going to restrict myself to this critical review of what happened next.

Somewhere in the beginning, Vasundhara Das was introduced. I think she's quite talented, probably not the ranks of say Sadhana or Sunidhi... But surely Vasundhara was capable of a lot of variation(certainly not like Anuradha Sriram) which she could bring to the show. She came in, in a simple black salwar kameez and noticable a bottle of drinking water which she noticably kept bending down and placing in front of her and without fail picking it up while she walked out...

As the orchestra started tuning, we saw a bunch of girls walk in too and suddenly Dum dum dumaka dam dam damaka dum dum dumaka dum dum started and I found myself hoping it was Yaaro yarodi from Alaipayuthey rather than Chalka Chalka re from Saathiya. My wishes were answered... It was! Tamil rocks, man! And the song was okay except when the orchestra abruptly stopped, probably giving Vasundhara chance to go unplugged while she crooned.. She did croon.. but it was for the raaga more than out of aalapana! Hastily, the orchestra resumed and the song finished without incident! Still.. not bad, I thought and then next thing we saw was another western babe come in and do Aaa aaa aaa aaa aaaa.. Ok dont get scared.. That was the initial Aalapana in the Veerapandi kotayile from Thiruda Thiruda. Cool! This was another chorus sung song and the drums and other percussionists were particularly good. And the entire crowd enjoyed the song thoroughly.... I clapped whole-heartedly for this one... Just when I was under the impression that the variety was picking up, I was in for severe disappointment. Thee Thee from Thiruda Thiruda again...
Rasathi chorused by a bunch of girls (It wasnt bad.. but it wasnt great)
Taal Taal n more Taal...
And practically all of the songs of Rang de Basanti except Lukka Chupi (Thank God!!!) - This was maybe because Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (director of the movie) was there... but so what yaar? I mean here are 1000s of people who've paid atleast $25 each to get in here and feel like we are listening to a CD of RDB. Thats not the worst part... The biggest letdown was yet to come -- THERE WERE CLOSE TO 6 SONGS IN KARAOKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We did karoake in Deepotsav... But thats coz we didnt have access to such great musical talent... and musicians! Agreed, Rahman's music is practically irreproducable and the most heart wrenching thing was that Rahman himself sang Dil se re to a karaoke disc! The only thing I could think for the lack of variety was that they apparently had just 3 karaoke discs - Taal, Thiruda Thiruda n RDB!!! I cant tell you how disappointed I was...

There was an unplugged session between Srini ( a really talented guy with ARR) and Patrick ( an amazingly talented dude who can play virtually every instrument and sing the dinaka din tha as good if not better than us ) and evoked a "Ekdum desi hai sala" comment from Srini.. The unplugged session was short but nice... And then there was this violin (by Melissa-another supertalented babe) and base violin (by Sekhar - awesome... thats all I can say) and Tabla (by Patrick) jugalbandi which totally rocked...

Some points of the show have to be appreciated like the ones I mentioned above. For most part though, it was a huuge letdown... I mean Karaoke.. what was that? And they didnt mention that it wasnt ARR's band!! It was this band called Global Rhythm who were really good.. but not ARR! I missed Sivamani n the others in particular.. And this 150 stars jazz was royal crap.. It was a fundraiser which they conveniently screened under the ARR banner and 'fooled' public like us! :( And well honestly, we would enjoy the non-desi kids singing like 2/20 songs.. It feels nice... When its 17/20 songs, the humor is lost! The curtain to the show was one of the few nice things. Rahman sang Vande Mataram and everyone left with a feel-good contentness.. But thats about it.. In short, Rahman was wasted in such a concert!!!

I have been to many concerts in the past, noticably the ones at Saarang, IIT Madras, one with Shaan and one with Shankar Mahadevan, both of which totally rocked and brought the roof down! All in all, the next time they say ARR with blah blah.. I swear I ain't going... If its ARR n his band or anything close to the Unity of light show they had in Chennai, I am sure as hell there! And the show was called -Wake up?? Who were they kidding? As if we could sleep with all that sound anyways!