{"page":"\u003clink rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"https://lessonplanet.com/assets/packs/css/resources-c03aa079.css\" /\u003e\n\u003clink rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"https://lessonplanet.com/assets/packs/css/lp_boclips_stylesheets-517835be.css\" media=\"all\" /\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-title='A.R. Rahman prepares touring Bollywood production' data-url='/boclips/videos/5c54c464d8eafeecae168703' data-video-url='/boclips/videos/5c54c464d8eafeecae168703' id='bo_player_modal'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='boclips-resource-page modal-dialog panel-container'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='react-notifications-root'\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-header'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-type'\u003e\n\u003ci aria-hidden='true' class='fai fa-regular fa-circle-play'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\nVideo\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch1 class='rp-title' id='video-title'\u003e\nA.R. Rahman prepares touring Bollywood production\n\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-actions'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='mr-1'\u003e\n\u003ca class=\"btn btn-success\" data-posthog-event=\"Signup: LP Signup Activity\" data-posthog-location=\"body_link_boclips\" data-remote=\"true\" href=\"/subscription/new\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGet Free Access\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"\"\u003e for 10 Days\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e!\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-body'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-info'\u003e\n\u003cdiv aria-label='Hide resource details' class='rp-hide-info' role='button' tabindex='0'\u003e\u0026times;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ci aria-label='Expand resource details' class='rp-expand-info fai fa-solid fa-up-right-and-down-left-from-center' role='button' tabindex='0'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\n\u003ci aria-label='Compress resource details' class='rp-compress-info fai fa-solid fa-down-left-and-up-right-to-center' role='button' tabindex='0'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-rating'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='resource-pool'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='pool-label'\u003ePublisher:\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003cspan class='pool-name'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='text'\u003e\u003ca data-publisher-id=\"30356011\" href=\"/search?publisher_ids%5B%5D=30356011\"\u003eCurated Video\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-description'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='short-description'\u003eWith scores of dancers moving in unison atop trains, singing amid ancient ruins and running across cricket fields, the average Bollywood production is a grand spectacle.Taking such a show on the road would seem to require significant...\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003cspan class='full-description hide'\u003eWith scores of dancers moving in unison atop trains, singing amid ancient ruins and running across cricket fields, the average Bollywood production is a grand spectacle.\u003cbr/\u003eTaking such a show on the road would seem to require significant downsizing. Not for A.R. Rahman, who garnered worldwide exposure with his Academy Award-winning score to \"Slumdog Millionaire.\"\u003cbr/\u003eThe Indian film composer is trying to orchestrate his own rise to international stardom by making his production even bigger to dazzle audiences in massive concert venues across the Western Hemisphere with elaborate stage shows teeming with dancers, acrobats and high-tech lighting.\u003cbr/\u003eThe tour begins June 11 at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum near New York and wends through North America and Europe before ending at London's Wembley Stadium in late July, with ticket prices for the roughly three-hour-long shows ranging from $45 to $1,000.\u003cbr/\u003eThrough the concerts, Rahman is attempting something many performers from outside the English-speaking world have tried and failed to do: transcend a regional, ethnic niche and become an international mainstream superstar.\u003cbr/\u003e\"My core audiences are from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Middle East and all those people, so after 'Slumdog Millionaire,' we wanted audiences from the U.S. and Europe,\" Rahman said, seated in a vast rehearsal hall in an industrial part of the San Fernando Valley.\u003cbr/\u003eIn a music scene dominated by lithe 20-something songstresses and frenetic hip-hop collectives, the soft-spoken 44-year-old, with his squat, sparkplug-shaped physique and shaggy, brushed-back black coiffure, might seem an unlikely candidate for sustained Western pop stardom.\u003cbr/\u003eDuring an interview in a room dominated by a towering drum kit, Rahman cast longing glances at the piano beside him, looking like he'd rather be alone with the keyboard than at the center of this frantic pre-tour bustle.\u003cbr/\u003e\"I'm an introvert, actually,\" he said, then corrected himself, \"I was an introvert, rather.\"\u003cbr/\u003eHe's also rowing against a tide that has capsized other non-Western stars who attempted to find a place in a global pop pantheon dominated by European and American performers.\u003cbr/\u003eThe Japanese singing duo Puffy had big plans when they played their first U.S. concerts at the beginning of the decade, but they got little for their troubles beyond a cease and desist letter from lawyers for Sean Combs, aka Puff Daddy.\u003cbr/\u003eAnd does anyone remember Rain, the Korean pop idol who planned to take on America with a U.S. tour and a supporting role in the 2008 action film \"Speed Racer\"? (Does anyone even remember \"Speed Racer\"?)\u003cbr/\u003eBut Rahman is off to a hopeful start.\u003cbr/\u003eHis music is ubiquitous in his native India, where he is acclaimed for crafting moving movie music with global influences that appeal to contemporary Indian listeners for more than 100 films.\u003cbr/\u003e\"He has supplied the soundtrack for a whole generation,\" TV chef Padma Lakshi wrote in an appreciation for Time magazine, which named Rahman one of the 100 most influential people of 2009.\u003cbr/\u003eIndia's Congress party even adopted the song \"Jai Ho,\" from the \"Slumdog\" soundtrack, as the anthem for its 2009 campaign, from which it emerged as the election's top vote getter.\u003cbr/\u003eOutside India, Rahman has played sold-out shows in ethnic Indian enclaves, while his percussion-driven score of plaintive crescendo-climbing wails and sultry warbles lured some 150,000 North American viewers to the 2001 film \"Lagaan,\" a nearly four-hour-long epic about cricket.\u003cbr/\u003eThe success of the \"Slumdog\" soundtrack, which earned Rahman two Academy Awards and two Grammys and sold nearly 400,000 copies in the United States, has given him a platform to continue building his mainstream appeal.\u003cbr/\u003eRahman's publicist Allisan Elbl said ticket-sale data for the upcoming shows were not immediately available and Ticketmaster declined to discuss sales.\u003cbr/\u003eSeveral stadiums and arenas where Rahman will play early in his tour did not return calls or are declined to comment but the one venue that did respond, the Patriot Center near Washington D.C., said Thursday that 90 percent of the tickets have already been sold for Rahman's June 13 appearance.\u003cbr/\u003e\"People from all over the world really respond and resonate to his music,\" said John Beasley, the concert tour's music director.\u003cbr/\u003eBeasley oversees the tour's 20-person coterie of flutists, cellists, tambura-strummers, singers and other music-makers, some of whom have played with Lionel Richie, Fleetwood Mac, Alanis Morissette and other Western pop stars. Beasley himself is a veteran of Miles Davis' musical entourage.\u003cbr/\u003eThe musicians are elements of a stage show that also includes four troupes of dancers, each of which will strut the stage deploying an entirely different style of choreography.\u003cbr/\u003eAll the while, a high-tech projection rig that's only been used before in standalone light shows will throw three-dimensional renderings of the Himalayas, the Ganges River and the slums of Mumbai onto the stage.\u003cbr/\u003eThe shows will also feature Cirque du Soleil acrobats, including a Mongolian contortionist who has reworked her act into a display of extreme Indian yoga.\u003cbr/\u003e\"It's a merging of cultures,\" said the show's artistic director Amy Tinkham, who has presided over tours for Britney Spears, Mariah Carey and other high-caliber acts. \"It's very East-meets-West in a very spectacular way.\"\u003cbr/\u003eAnanda Mitra, a Wake Forest University communications professor and author of the book \"India through the Western Lens,\" said that East-meets-West sensibility has always been a key to Rahman's success.\u003cbr/\u003e\"He's able to create a sound which is appealing not only to those whose ears are attuned to traditional Indian film music, but also to ears that are attuned to Western pop,\" Mitra said.\u003cbr/\u003eRahman's art grew in the petri dish of an increasingly internationally minded India, which began its rapid globalization during a series of economic reforms that began in the late 1980s, Mitra said.\u003cbr/\u003eIndians suddenly found it just as easy to buy ABBA or Bee Gees cassettes as it was to get sitar-driven Hindi classical music or folk-inflected film scores.\u003cbr/\u003eMitra said Rahman has been particularly adept at fusing the two musical cultures, which puts him in good stead to be an international star.\u003cbr/\u003e\"What Rahman is doing is saying, 'We don't have to think just about the Indians. There is an opportunity to globalize this music,'\" Mitra said.\u003cbr/\u003emusic/video/performance rights must be cleared\u003cbr/\u003eAP Television\u003cbr/\u003eLos Angeles, 22 May 2010\u003cbr/\u003e1. UPSOUND: Medium A.R. Rahman talking to concert tour music director John Beasley\u003cbr/\u003e2. SOUNDBITE (English) A.R. Rahman/Composer (on the message he wants to deliver to a Western audience with the tour): \u003cbr/\u003e\"The message is of course taking the cultural elements beyond India and beyond Indians and presenting in a way that people would exchange, take whatever they want from that.\" \u003cbr/\u003e3. Wide music director John Beasley and flutist Naveen at rehearsal\u003cbr/\u003e4. Medium flutist Naveen at rehearsal\u003cbr/\u003e5. Medium music director John Beasley at rehearsal\u003cbr/\u003e6. Tight flutist Naveen at rehearsal\u003cbr/\u003e7. SOUNDBITE (English) Amy Tinkham/Tour Creative Director (on how this tour is different from previous ones that she's directed or choreographed): \u003cbr/\u003e\"It's the merging of cultures in a way I haven't gotten to do yet where we're taking something so beautiful which is the wide range of A.R. Rahman music, which is everything from sound score to pop music and musicals and taking the idea of India and the culture of India out to the world and it's very East-meets-West in a spectacular way and I've never gotten to do something like that.\" \u003cbr/\u003e8. UPSOUND: Tight A.R. Rahman talking to concert tour music director John Beasley\u003cbr/\u003e9. Wide A.R. Rahman talking to concert tour music director John Beasley\u003cbr/\u003e10. SOUNDBITE (English) A.R. Rahman/Composer (on how this tour is different from concerts he's performed at home in India): \u003cbr/\u003e\"We wanted to give it a one-up push for the whole tour and be as stylistic as any Western concert but having the color and spirituality and the melodies from India and to give a whole new experience to anyone who's watching it even if they don't know my music, never heard my music, they don't know anything about me, they'll come and feel good.\"\u003cbr/\u003e11. Wide dancer rehearsing for concert\u003cbr/\u003e12. Tight dancer rehearsing for concert\u003cbr/\u003e13. SOUNDBITE (English) Amy Tinkham/Tour Creative Director (on how Indian and non-Indian performers will respond to the concerts): \u003cbr/\u003e\"Well I think for anyone who is Indian, the sentiment of Indian culture, the color and the spirit and the heart and the soul will be, you know, it's a journey home, but for people who are not Indian, it is so immediately appealing because of its specific artistic way of expressing itself. This is a country that has such an amazing beautiful way of expressing who they are and what it is that it's hard not to be moved by it. The beauty is staggering.\"\u003cbr/\u003e14. Medium dancer rehearsing for concert\u003cbr/\u003e15. Wide dancer rehearsing for concert\u003cbr/\u003e16. Medium dancers rehearsing for concert\u003cbr/\u003e17. SOUNDBITE (English), A.R. Rahman/Composer, on performing across cultures: \"We don't see any race or language when you have a great artist and you have music. That's the reason I think a lot of people love my music, they love my personality, I think, and I hope to take that even more further in braking prejudices, in breaking so many preconceptions about people.\u003cbr/\u003e18. Wide dancers rehearsing for concert\u003cbr/\u003e19. 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