Lagaan, released 25 years ago, has only grown in stature, firmly placing itself at the heart of India’s cultural conversation. What makes it even more special is that it is not just a landmark film, but also a landmark soundtrack. Recently, the film’s core creative team, music composer AR Rahman, director Ashutosh Gowariker, lyricist Javed Akhtar, and actor-producer Aamir Khan, came together to revisit the making of its music, especially the unforgettable track “Ghanan Ghanan.”
‘Rahman is not a regular music director’
In a chat with Spotify India, AR Rahman reflected on how packed that phase of his career was. “So I was doing like 12 movies that year. I was doing Padayappa, I was doing this, and I was doing so many movies across languages. And then he (Ashutosh) was so accommodative.”
Talking about the making of “Ghanan Ghanan”, Rahman added, “If I was doing Padayappa at another studio, he (Ashutosh Gowariker) would hang out there. Between breaks, because we used to record with the whole orchestra for that particular movie, he would come by and ask, ‘Can we have this chant from this idea and this melody from here together?’ So, to answer your question, how can you put all these voices together and still make it sound like one song? The chant is what actually unifies the whole thing. When everything is spread out, you need something that ties it all together. So we literally constructed the song stage by stage, piece by piece.”
Javed Akhtar, meanwhile, spoke about what sets AR Rahman apart as a composer. “I believe that if you can write a coherent song on Mr. Rahman’s tune, then you can do anything in life. Because he is not regular. Most music directors at that time had one structure: one tune for the mukhda, another for the antara. Once you got the groove, you knew where it was headed. But with Rahman sir, you never know. You never know how long or how short the next line will be. every line has a different meter. Every single line.”
Aamir Khan, reflecting on Rahman’s working style, shared what makes him so distinctive. “What AR used to do. as Ashutosh told me, was that he would go into his room, light a candle, sit at the keyboard, and switch on a recorder. Whatever came out of him over the next two or three hours would simply get recorded. Then he would take the cassette out, give it to Ashutosh, and say, ‘See if you like something in this.’ Ashutosh would listen to those two or three hours and mark portions he liked. He would say, ‘I like this section, I like that section,’ and then give feedback to AR: ‘Out of those two or three hours, these are the bits I responded to.’”
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Why does AR Rahman light a candle in his studio?
Aamir added how different this was from traditional music sessions. “I had been part of music sessions with my father and my uncle. Bappi Lahri used to come home. They would actually sing the tune out. They wouldn’t play for two hours and then say, ‘Select anything you like from it.’ So this was a very new thing for me.” Javed Akhtar also recalled a moment that revealed Rahman’s philosophy. “The first time, while we were working together, one day I asked Rahman sir, ‘Why do you light this candle?’ He said, ‘Look at this studio, everything here is mechanical. There should be something that is not mechanical, something that is bright, gentle, and real. That’s why.’”
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Ashutosh Gowariker, in turn, remembered the first time he heard Javed Akhtar’s lyrics for “Ghanan Ghanan” and he fell on his knees. “It was such an outstanding rendition of that tune.” He also spoke about wanting the sound of clouds to open the song, and how Rahman turned that challenge into something entirely unexpected. “When everybody had left for the shoot, they were all in Bhuj. Now I had to take ‘Ghanan’ and head back. I told Rahman, ‘Rahman, the song is done very well. At the beginning, I’m not going to put sounds of thunder. I don’t want sound effects. But we still need the feeling clouds approaching, and my flight is tomorrow morning, so we need to do something about it. I can go to Bhuj for the shoot without that.”
He added, “At 4 a.m., Rahman played something for me. And let me tell you what he did first, this is my interpretation of it. Shankar had already sung it, but what Rahman did was take ‘Ghanan’, Shankar’s word, loop it multiple times and then adjust its volume. So it became something else entirely. I thought it was brilliant. I was like, this is sheer genius.”
Responding to the praise, AR Rahman remained characteristically humble. “When you have a collaborator like you Ashutosh, an inspiration like Aamir, a genius like Javed saab, my role is just to float along with it. I don’t make fixed decisions like, ‘this is it,’ because he (Ashutosh) understands the story better. And I’m from South India, so I need to assume, interpret, and sense where things are going. When you get inspired, his ideas get highlighted. I gauge what they’re responding to, and then you expand on it.”
Lagaan released 25 years ago.