Athithya Eswaran

I find the idea of Rahman's "rise and fall" fascinating, but I fundamentally disagree with the premise. These are my playlists from last month and this month. And they tell a rather different story. I listen to over 1,000 artists across Carnatic, Hindustani, blues, jazz, metal, country, rock, pop and several other genres. I've also moved beyond listening to making music myself. And here's the interesting part. The more I understand music, the more extraordinary Rahman becomes to me. When you begin to appreciate harmonic progressions, modal structures, counterpoint, rhythmic layering, orchestration, synthesis, sound design and the psychoacoustics of a mix, you start hearing things you never noticed before. Rahman's genius was never merely about composing memorable melodies. It was about how he constructed an entire sonic world around them. His use of space, silence, timbre, unconventional instrumentation, vocal textures and the interplay between acoustic and electronic elements is extraordinary. What fascinates me is how his musical vocabulary continues to evolve. The Rahman of Roja isn't the Rahman of Dil Se, Rockstar, Ponniyin Selvan or the music I'm listening to today. And evolution isn't always immediately accessible. Some compositions reveal themselves through repeated listening, especially when the arrangement, harmonic movement and sonic textures are doing as much storytelling as the melody. Has every album worked? Certainly not. But that's a very different argument from artistic decline. I think we're confusing the decline of an artist's commercial dominance with the decline of his musical imagination. The industry may have changed. Listening habits may have changed. But measuring a composer of Rahman's depth by how many chartbusters he produces is an extraordinarily narrow way to evaluate musical achievement. My own musical journey has taken me through hundreds of composers, thousands of songs and an ever-expanding understanding of genres and production. And yet, the one artist who continues to surprise, challenge and inspire me is Rahman. Thirty-four years after Roja, I don't hear an artist running out of ideas. I hear an artist who still makes me want to understand music better. Perhaps that's the difference between listening for the next hit and listening for the music itself. And if anything, my appreciation for him has grown a thousandfold. ❤️