Oscar winning legendary musician AR Rahman has released his new single “The Flying Lotus” with the composer aiming to show people’s “admiration and resentment” towards demonetisation.
Rahman said in a statement, “November 2016 was an interesting phase for India as the government announced demonetisation. As India continued to rise on the path to progress, what were its citizen’s feelings? And what about the impact of demonetisation on ordinary folks?”
Last year on 8 November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the biggest-ever demonetisation exercise India has ever seen by suddenly withdrawing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from public use in a bid to clamp down on black money and fake currency menace.
“With ‘The Flying Lotus’, I have tried to capture people’s unspoken admiration as also the loud resentment of an interesting occurrence of historic proportions through the language of music,” Rahman was quoted by PTI.
Rahman said that while he wasn’t directly affected by demonetisation, he turned to the common man to gauge their reaction.
“I thought the common man felt extremely good about the move. I like to live a very normal life, and I live in a normal neighbourhood. For this song, my voice is their (common people’s) voice,” says the composer. “Sometimes, I travelled economy class to understand what people thought about it. You can’t live a comfortable life and then try and have an opinion about something. You have to see both sides of the world, and then derive your opinion from it,” Hindustan Times quoted him as saying.
Conducted by Ricardo Averbach, “The Flying Lotus” is a 19-minute-long music piece in collaboration with the Internationally renowned Seattle Symphony.
“The Flying Lotus” is available Worldwide on physical and digital formats exclusively on Universal Music Group.