DR.A.R.REHMAN AS A SINGER

Playback Singer

When the final re-recording of the song ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ of ‘Roja’ was being done in Rahman’s studio, director Manirathnam was present. When he heard a boatman humming ‘Yelelo Yelelo..’ in the second interlude of the song, he asked for the person who sang it. Rahman told him that it was his voice. Manirathnam noticed that the voice had the zeal and passion, which was very different.
After the huge success of ‘Roja’, when Manirathnam signed on the composer for their second combination ‘ Bombay ‘, he insisted that Rahman sing at least one song. Thus was born Rahman the playback singer.

He sang ‘Andha Arabic Kadaloram’ aka ‘Humma Humma’ song in it. Same story repeated for director Shankar, who also had liked the ‘Yelelo’ part in ‘Roja’ song. Shankar too insisted that Rahman should sing at least one song for his film. Rahman did that job for their next combination, ‘Kadhalan’. The song was ‘Oorvasi Oorvasi’, which instantly became a huge hit throughout the world.

Rahman had lent his voice to his compositions earlier too but they had been part of the chorus or bit pieces like ‘Oleywo Oleywola’ in ‘Mukkala Muqabala’ in ‘Kadhalan’ or background pieces in the film, and of course, the interludes like ‘Yelelo’ in ‘Roja’. But ‘Humma Humma’ in ‘ Bombay ‘ was Rahman’s first complete and full-fledged song. With ‘Humma Humma’, Rahman came to be regarded as much a playback singer as a composer. His song ‘Musthafa Musthafa’ from ‘Kadhal Desam’ was another hit that made Sony take notice of Rahman and ask him to sing the songs for it’s non-film album ‘Vande Mataram’.

Rahman says, “I have always been forced to sing. It is extra tiring to sing and get the words right. I sing only when forced to, because singing is very different line of work. You need a lot of Riyaaz and other things to be a good singer.”While he continued lending his voice to several un-credited songs, his solos such as ‘Dil Se Re’ from ‘Dil Se..’ have made his fans crave for more songs from him. It has become an amusing and common sight at various award functions to see the compeers trying to cajole Rahman into singing on stage and Rahman coming up with hilarious excuses to avoid the same.
Later it became quite a regular thing to have Rahman’s voice in his own songs. For most of those Rahman was not credited in the film or the audio release. Mainly he has sung songs in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, English and Urdu. With his soft soothing and to a certain extent guttural vocals, he has created magic. It is noticed that when there is lots of passion or pain or patriotism in his songs, the singer is Rahman himself!