AR Rehman concert

I attended an AR Rehman concert earlier this year, which was in the Wembley SSE Arena. The show had been delayed multiple times, from May to September last year and then from March to finally in July this year. I had been looking forward so much to attend it and was very happy that I finally made it with all the reschedulings too!

I think for our generation, some of the best songs we have all danced to and hummed all our life have been composed by him. From Swades to Pardes, from Rangeela to Rang de Basanti, from Bombay to Rockstar, and so on. Who can forget Chaiya Chaiya and Humma and countless other such memories he has given us. I think most of my favourite Bollywood music must be AR Rehman's.

And what can be better than listening to him play all these songs live? Its not being able to listen to him play these songs live...

The whole experience was a big big let down for me. Maybe it was the expectations that made it so disappointing, but I did not enjoy being there at all.

I should of course start with the positives. The music acoustics and lighting in the arena was well organised. And the videos playing on the screen while the songs were being played clearly had taken a lot of effort. They were a bit too modern for me, but complemented the music well.

But the song selection was the biggest let down of all. Rehman barely played any Hindi songs, not even 20%! The rest of it were all just Tamil songs!! I for sure did not enjoy being there and I think a large part of the audience didn't either. People all around were complaining even during the performance. And I could see it sitting on some of the top seats that the crowd was mostly subdued and almost dead in most of the songs. There was barely any excitement around and I wonder whether he noticed it or not?!

As far as I was concerned, the whole show was a waste for me. And so for a lot of the others too - the audience was sighing every time another Tamil song started. And I heard a lot of people complaining to each other when leaving the arena too. All the way to the tube station. And twitter too:). (I found many similar reviews on ticketmaster now).

I think even a 50-50 split of Hindi and Tamil would have been fine. Or if the performance was supposed to be in Tamil, it should have at least been marketed as such. That would have been fair to the audience. It is a bit unfair to expect an audience in London to only want Tamil songs, you would expect a lot more non-Tamil people to turn up too.

In the hindi selection too, the songs played were not really his biggest hits. There were songs sung from Tamasha and OK jaanu and nothing from Bombay, Rangeela, Pardes, Taal, Saathiya, Swades, Rang de Basanti, Rockstar and so many other movies to choose from? I recorded only one song in Hindi, which I am posting here. I kept waiting but never got a chance to record any other Hindi hits of his 😏.

And as an aside, there were too many singers on the stage, all the time. From 5-10 for each of the songs. And not enough of AR Rehman. Wonder why...

Anyways, I guess for me, it was the song selection which just took away the whole experience. I followed the twitter tweets for a few days and one of the common responses I heard in his defence was that music transcends languages. And one should enjoy music irrespective of the language.

My response to that is for deep music lovers, that might be true. But for a lot of us attending the show, we were not music connoisseurs. For people like us, the lyrics and the memories and feelings associated with the words are as much important as the music itself. Its the words which make you relate to the music, bring it to life. And enjoying new songs in a concert without those words to give it any meaning just takes away the whole experience from you.

Anyways I would still love to attend an AR Rehman show but only if I am convinced there would be at last 50% of Hindi songs there. Else its a miss for me...