AR Rahman’s ‘Tu Hi Re’ singer Hariharan agrees there’s a power shift in Hindi music industry: ‘You have to think about creativity first and money later’

The singer, who has rendered Rahman’s popular romantic track “Tu Hi Re” from Mani Ratnam’s Bombay (1995), called it a “grey area”. His longtime collaborator Leslie Lewis also agreed that there’s indeed been a shift in the power dynamics within the music industry over the past few years. “It’s not just the old players anymore. New people with new thoughts have come in, and digital platforms have changed the parameters completely,” he told NDTV.

“Earlier, the people judging us had experience and creative instinct. Today, it’s very corporate. The person taking the call is often making sure their job is secure. They may love music, but they don’t always have the experience to decide who the right artist is,” he added. Both of them, thus, encouraged the launch of Goongoonalo, which recently launched 100 songs, while treating the singers, composers, producers, and lyricists collaborated as equals, charging no fees to one another.

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Meerra Chopra, a co-producer on Kishor Pandurang Belekar’s silent film Gandhi Talks, for which AR Rahman has composed the score, came out in his support. “Only two Indians have truly taken India to the global stage in a way the whole world recognizes — @priyankachopra and @arrahman. Trolling him for something he didnt even mean is not just wrong, it’s disgraceful. Respect the legend. He’s the one who composed the most iconic #vandematram,” she wrote on X on Saturday.

Rahman made the controversial comments in an interview with BBC Asian Network earlier this week. He confessed feeling like an outsider in the first eight years of his tenure in the Hindi film industry, all the way till Subhash Ghai’s 1999 hit romantic musical Taal. When asked if it was because a Tamilian like him wasn’t made feel welcome in an increasingly polarized city like Mumbai, Rahman made a confession.

“Maybe I didn’t get to know all this stuff. Maybe God concealed all this stuff. But for me, I never felt any of those, but the past eight years, maybe, because the power shift has happened,” Rahman said. “People who are not creative have the power now to decide things, and this might have been a communal thing also, but not in my face. It comes to me as Chinese whispers that they booked you, but the music company went ahead and hired their five composers,” he added.

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AR Rahman’s comments have invited a lot of concern as well as flak. Actor-filmmaker and BJP MP Kangana Ranaut hit back at the composer on Saturday by alleging that Rahman even declined a meeting with her to discuss providing the score for her period political drama Emergency, which released last year.