AR Rahman’s stage fright 30 years on: from seeing death to world tour

AR Rahman now commands some of the biggest stages in the world, but the Oscar-winning composer says his early live shows were anything but comfortable. Speaking to Hindustan Times, he recalled that being on stage once felt so terrifying that he sensed he was “seeing death.”

It is an unusually candid admission from an artist whose name is shorthand for musical certainty. But Rahman’s first live performance, in Malaysia in 1996, came with a set of problems that went beyond nerves.

Why his studio sound was hard to take live

Rahman’s music was unlike much of what stage musicians were used to playing. That made his concerts a translation exercise as much as a performance. He told Hindustan Times that his compositions were “so different” and difficult for musicians to interpret on stage.

“My music was so different, and it was hard to interpret for musicians on stage.”

For Hindi film fans, Rahman’s catalogue is built from layered arrangements, vocal textures and production choices that do not slot neatly into a standard live band set. The solution took time: he needed players who could add fresh ideas without losing the original recordings.

Rahman said he looked for musicians who would “add things and not destroy what was created for months.” That balance, between live energy and studio precision, remains at the heart of his concerts.

Wonderment Tour: the next chapter

Three decades after that first show, Rahman is taking his music on the road again with the Wonderment Tour. The production is a three-hour show that mixes familiar favourites from the 1990s with more recent compositions in a large-scale live format.

The India leg includes two key dates:

• Mumbai: Jio World Garden on November 1
• Delhi: Backyard Sports Club on November 21

Rahman has also been performing with symphony orchestras in the US, continuing to explore new ways to present a catalogue that once felt impossible to reproduce on stage.

Ramayana and the multilingual rollout of “Mangal Rang”

Beyond the tour, the composer has teamed up with Hans Zimmer for the first time on Ramayana. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari and produced by Namit Malhotra, the two-part epic is scheduled to release on November 5.

Its newly released song Mangal Rang, centred on the love story of Lord Rama and Sita, has been receiving immense love online. The track has arrived simultaneously in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam; the Hindi version features Arijit Singh and Shreya Ghoshal, with lyrics by Dr Kumar Vishwas.

For fans, this is a full-circle moment: the composer who once feared the stage is now less than a week away from a film release and a major concert run.

Source: India Today