Indian composer, singer, and music producer AR Rahman speaks to media on the red carpet during the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne Awards Night at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne on Aug. 16.WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images
Choreographer and teacher Lata Pada is a doyenne of Indian classical arts in Canada. But the founder of the Mississauga-based Sampradaya Dance Academy also has her kohl-lined eyes trained on popular culture.
She’s long been an admirer of A.R. Rahman, the celebrated Indian composer and songwriter behind the Oscar-winning song Jai Ho. Prior to his Hollywood success, Rahman had been making music in India’s Tamil and Hindi film industries, earning him a global audience that blends classical Indian sensibilities with jazz and other musical traditions from around the world. That audience included Pada, whose school focuses on the classical Indian dance Bharatanatyam.
Listening to some of his hits in 2020, she dreamed up the idea of a show based on his music. On Oct. 5, Sampradaya Dance Creations, the dance company that grew out of Pada’s dance school, will present a live tribute to Rahman, joined by the Mississauga Symphony Orchestra, Indian Music Ensemble and guest dance artists from across Toronto. The evening will present a fusion of music and dance to celebrate Rahman, as well as 35 years of Sampradaya Dance Creations.
“It just struck me how danceable his music is,” says Pada on a phone call with Sampradaya Dance Creations’ artistic director Suma Nair. Pada tracked down an e-mail address for Rahman and proposed doing a tribute concert. When he came to perform in Toronto in 2022 at the Scotiabank Arena, Pada and Nair went to meet him backstage. It took four years, and the involvement of many entertainment lawyers and other collaborators, to get the scores for Rahman’s tracks.
“For me, it’s the theme songs Bombay or Roja. They are so full of emotional depth, even the first few seconds you listen to them. It takes you right in,” says Nair. “Some songs that have rich orchestration, we have just left them for music lovers to enjoy, without dance being part of it.”
In a stroke of symphonic serendipity, Rahman himself is in concert on Oct. 5 in Vancouver. He will join the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, in collaboration with Vancouver International Film Festival, for an evening of stories and music from his career. Rahman will share a keynote address before the performance, which will span his musical career in the Indian film industry and Hollywood.
Tribute concerts can be a revelatory experience, says Rahman, in a Zoom interview from Chennai, India. “They have started to become better in the past six, seven years,” he adds, noting that it wasn’t until Boston’s Berklee College of Music started to experiment with his songs, and went on to organize a concert in 2014 and establish a scholarship in Rahman’s name, that some of the “best stuff started to happen. They showed the world how to interpret my songs … The respect they gave to the integrity of the music; it’s very important to see what the composer intended to do.”
Some of Rahman’s most-beloved compositions were personal songs that ended up in films. He wrote songs such as Khwaja Mere Khwaja and Kun Faya Kun for himself, moved by the energy of the Sufi tradition of qawwali music. It so happened that these songs fit the requirements of film directors Jodha Akbar and Rockstar respectively, he says. He only allowed the film directors to use his music after promises they would not alter the songs. Even a song such as Dil Se Re, a popular power anthem that fans love to belt out at karaoke or more formal music sessions, began as a personal song.
The concert in Vancouver will feature some of these iconic songs, along with “completely diverse pieces. There’s a French song, and one from 127 Hours,” he adds, referring to the Danny Boyle movie. “It’s almost like a workshop. I hope to talk about the process, depending on the questions. I am bad at conducting master classes. But you can ask me a question, and I’ll have some simple answer.”