A.R. Rahman Wants to Build a Better Nation: ‘My Music Is Celebrating India’

variety.com:

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Double Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman has music projects in every corner of the world.

But none is bigger than his long-term plan to build a better India through culture. Rahman (“Slumdog Millionaire”) lifted the veil on his nation-building exercise and some of his immediate projects at a masterclass at the Internation Film Festival of India, in Goa, where he was interviewed by Variety’s Naman Ramachandran and introduced by filmmaker and festival director Shekhar Kapur.

The session was ostensibly held to honor the late playback singer Lata Mangeshkar, who died in 2022. But the scene for a wider-ranging session was set when the “Elizabeth” director said that for all his musical genius Rahman is also “an entrepreneur, a technologist and a spiritualist.” The session got under way with a clip from “Headhunting to Beatboxing,” a documentary film that Rahman produced set in and about Nagaland, a part of India once considered to be wild frontier territory.“Nagaland had a violent past.

People there found a reason to make peace,” Rahman explained when for the reasons for his involvement. “Nagaland has a minster for music.” The conversation swirled repeatedly into discussion of musical theater, which was the central topic of the masterclass, and Rahman’s plans to build physical infrastructure of a quality that matches his ambitions.