Armaan Malik on Ramayana’s Kannada Track and Rahman’s Trust

The Kannada version of a Ramayana song has brought three musical worlds into one frame: Armaan Malik’s voice, AR Rahman’s melodic sensibility and Hans Zimmer’s global-scale scoring. Malik recorded Mangala Sangama, the Kannada edition of Mangal Rang, for Nitesh Tiwari’s upcoming epic. Bela Shende features on the track.

The Hindi original was sung by Arijit Singh and Shreya Ghoshal. Now the Kannada version gives the song a second life in another language, supported by lyric and dub teams Malik says kept every word authentic.

Why Rahman’s absence was not a loss

Malik recorded the number in Mumbai shortly before leaving for an international trip, so Rahman was not in the studio. Instead of treating that as a gap, Malik framed it as a sign of confidence. “With Rahman sir, his trust is the biggest compliment,” he said in an interview with Variety. The Kannada lyric team and dub crews, he added, ensured the pronunciation and intent carried complete respect for the language.

Kannada audiences matter more than charts

That local connection is the story. Malik said the response from Kannada-speaking listeners means more to him than chart performance alone. He described singing in Namma Kannada as feeling like home and pointed to Ondu Malebillu as a song that built him a family in the language.

• Global score, local voice: Rahman and Zimmer provide the cinematic canvas; Kannada lyricists and dub crews make it land.
• Trust over supervision: Malik recorded without Rahman present and treated creative autonomy as the real compliment.
• Audience before charts: The Kannada audience’s love, not just numbers, is the benchmark that matters to him.

A wider Indian musical moment

Malik also praised the Dhurandhar 2 soundtrack as one of the year’s best and celebrated the number of Indian entries submitted for Grammy consideration across film and independent music. His larger point is that Indian musicality deserves global attention, not as a trend but as a practice already wired into the country’s cinema and independent scenes.

For fans, Mangala Sangama matters because it shows a multilingual epic can stay rooted while reaching for a global scale. The track is already drawing praise, and Malik’s Kannada journey suggests that the real reward is not the chart position but the listener who treats the singer as their own.

Source: The Times of India