“It was not documentary type filming but a lot of scripting and creating of images that would evoke an emotion of vigorous pride in the hearts of all Indians,” Bala and Kanika note.ĪR Rahman was closely involved with the direction of the song, they say. The visuals, too, had to complement this. In fact, that was the brief that Mehboob had been given by Rahman – not to create something that the youth would respect but never sing. Image courtesy: Kanika Myers/ The album, however, had to appeal to the youth and AR Rahman was very clear about that from the beginning. It was designed by both directors, from a distinctive personal visual style.” That, layered with hoisting a giant flag and having the mass of India stand below it in their traditional attire was a poetic representation of the inner patriot that each Indian is,” they say.Įxplaining how they decided on the visuals, Bala and Kanika say, “Travel was not as accessible nor affordable to both the urban and rural Indian as it is today, and so we made the journeys on their behalf to create images of cultural beauty intrinsic to India. “The core thought was to showcase the real beauty of India – that is her people set across her contrasting landscape, re-instilling pride in all Indians. One may look at the video now and feel that there is some degree of exoticisation or tokenism in it, but for Bala and Kanika, it was an earnest attempt to capture the diversity of the country. Image courtesy: Bharat Bala/ Over 20 years ago, it wasn’t easy for the team to travel to remote corners of the country to ensure that there was adequate representation from everywhere. The cassette became a bestseller in no time. The Vande Mataram album released in August 1997, three days before the 50th Independence Day. The Tamil version, Thai Manney Vanakkam, was written by Vairamuthu. The Hindi lyrics for Maa Tujhe Salam, the title song from the album, were written by Mehboob, who’d worked with Rahman for albums like Rangeela and Daud. AR Rahman was the first artiste they signed for a three album contract.Ĭonceptualized, funded and directed by Bala and Kanika, Rahman came on board to make an album to commemorate 50 years of Indian independence. 1997 was also the year that Sony Music entered the Indian market and sought to promote local artistes internationally. The idea of making a patriotic album reportedly came from his school friend Bharat Bala, an ad filmmaker who is the son of a freedom fighter. At the time, Rahman, who had just turned 30, still had his flamboyant hairstyle and it had been only five years since he'd blazed into the national music scene with Roja.
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