Adeigala, I’m not one of those disgusting bigots. This is a response to the criticism that A. R. Rahman disrespected Ramayana by deliberately making Mangal Rang a qawwali. ARR doesn’t think like that. He is above and beyond all such pettiness. I can’t believe I am having to say this. I’m one of the most insufferable Rahmaniacs you’ll ever meet.

Why everything about this Ramayana film is such a weird mess? Strange promotional events like the one with Mr. Beast; official soundtrack is released without three beautiful songs that were performed in the music launch event; a song by someone else is in the soundtrack while they have A R Rahman and Hans Zimmer as composers; some Sitar player is saying he is also composing music for the film; there was some news about James Newton Howard too being a part of the composing team (exciting if true, prefer Howard to Zimmer); T-Series keeps releasing two-minute butchered versions of the song as “the song” with incongruent visuals on their YouTube channel.

Background score in Dorothy is loud. Background score in Baththa is loud. Background score in Modha Rathiri is loud (“too much thavil,” a critic said). I see such comments often in reviews. Who is all this criticism directed at? The composer, and the composer alone? I do not think that is fair. Gone are the days when directors left it entirely to the composer to spot and score the film on their own. It is evident from the interviews that before Karthik Subbaraj approached Ilaiyaraaja, he had already done the spotting, that is, decided the moments where he wanted background score and even what kind of music he wanted to hear in these moments. The film he showed Ilaiyaraaja already had a temp score, with pre-existing music, much of it Ilaiyaraaja’s own compositions. In a recent interview, Karthik Subbaraj spoke about the discussions he had with Ilaiyaraaja about each cue in the film’s background score. There is a moment in the film where Karthik wanted silence and Ilaiyaraaja wanted to add music instead—the hill-top scene where Karthi (Rishikanth) confesses. I like the music in this moment: soothing, melodic and yet minimal and unintrusive. Karthik said that, in the final sound mix, the opening strings in this cue were mixed in such a way that they blend with the ambient sound (of the wind). In this case, Ilaiyaraaja too was involved in the mixing process. This, however, does not happen all the time; a director and the sound designer can entirely change, without consulting the composer, how loud or low the score is mixed in a film. Still, I felt there were some moments in Dorothy, that could have been left without music, or with minimal music; for example, the red sand action sequence (track “Sambavam” in the OST plays here). The orchestral score, the brass and the chilling urumi melam felt a bit too loud/intense for the moment. But why didn’t a similar orchestral score in the final action sequence in Pithamagan feel loud? When we saw Siththan smashing the villain to a pulp, we'd already lived with all the characters for nearly two hours; we knew what the villain did, we knew that Siththan is avenging his friend’s death, we understood his fury, and we felt all the emotions as intensely as the characters in the film did. In the red sand sequence in Dorothy, however, I barely know this villain who briefly appears in this episode, I do not know how this altercation will end, and I cannot even predict how it might end. Hence, I felt the loudness/intensity of the score is not fully earned. I enjoy the cue as a standalone piece of orchestral music, though. I am someone who listens to Ilaiyaraaja’s "A Beautiful Breakup" soundtrack on loop, despite knowing nothing about the film. It is a gorgeous hour-long orchestral work. Is it a great “film” score? I do not know. I cannot say until I watch the film. It may or may not be. The Baththa phenomenon is also interesting. Many felt Ilaiyaraaja should have scored this film. They felt so because they had recently experienced in Dorothy how Ilaiyaraaja’s score could turn a film into an intense emotional, and even spiritual, experience, and also because many heard Balaji Tharaneetharan say in the promotional interviews that he wanted Ilaiyaraaja for this film but was asked (by Atlee, the film’s producer) to consider Sai Abhyankkar as the composer. There is also a general perception that Sai Abhyankkar does not deserve the projects he gets. These paratextual, extra-musical, and extra-filmic ideas do influence the way we perceive and experience a film. What if Baththa had released months before Dorothy? What if Balaji had never revealed that he wanted Ilaiyaraaja? Would you still have said the same about the score? It is fascinating that in the reviews of Baththa that came from outside Tamil Nadu (from reviewers who may not have any knowledge about this discourse about Sai Abhyankkar) there was no criticism about the score, and some even said that the score blends neatly with the narrative. What did people feel about the score in Kadaisi Vivasayi when the film was released? It was widely known that Manikandan, the director, replaced Ilaiyaraaja’s score and worked with another composer. Is it a lesser film because Manikandan replaced Ilaiyaraaja’s score? I am not saying that all the criticism of the Baththa background score is entirely invalid. I am only trying to understand the various factors—factors beyond the music itself—that could make the score in a film seem loud, bad, incongruent, and ill-fitting. I do not know which specific musical cues people have in mind when they say that the background score in Baththa is loud or incongruent. I am guessing that the orchestral score in the final episode that leads to the intermission could be one. I have a theory about how the score in this scene (track "Baththa Lacrimosa" in the OST) might seem incongruent or loud to some. The main reason is that, though the narrative is not entirely from the boy’s perspective, the score entirely is. The boy is going through so many intense emotions; the guilt he carries is immense, he is terrified of the consequences of his action. As Balaji said, if the film was made entirely from the boy’s perspective, it would be a horror film. In this version, we still do empathise with the boy, we understand why he is terrified to open the door, but we adults would never be able to feel this fear as intensely as the boy does (we know that Baththa will not hurt the boy), we are always observing him from a distance. Hence the intensity of the orchestral score, which is fully in sync with the intensity of the boy’s emotions in the moment, feels a bit much for some of us. And again, all these decisions—which of the character’s emotions the score must closely align with, or should it remain at a distance as an omniscient observer and annotator of the unfolding narrative—are not entirely Sai Abhyankkar’s. Balaji said that he worked closely with Sai on the score; he too, like Karthik, did not leave it entirely to the composer. When asked about the score and the mix, Balaji clearly said: “It is entirely my call”. All this is to say that critiquing the composer and the composer alone for the perceived loudness of the score in a film is like critiquing an editor alone for the so-called “lag” in a film—crude and ill-informed.

Why A. R. Rahman why? Why do you have to use veena (an instrument associated with a Hindu deity and often heard in Hindu devotional songs) in a song sung to Allah? (Anbaalane) Why do you have to use Hindu-coded Indian classical-tinged melody for the monarch that represents the Church of England? (Elizabeth: The Golden Age)