Daily Times

AR Rahman has spoken about director Imtiaz Ali and his upcoming film, Amar Singh Chamkila, for which the musician has composed music.

Speaking with News18, AR Rahman called Amar Singh Chamkila “a very naughty picture”.

AR Rahman said, “I love working with Imtiaz. He is very friendly. You know, with certain people work happens like that and there’s no pressure.

With him, there’s never been pressure at all. I always wanted to do Punjabi music. I love the potency in the language in music. So this was a great opportunity.”

Speaking about the film, he said, “It is a very naughty picture, we had to find the place for music. If you look at it, Chamika is a composer, lyricist and singer.

The question I asked was, ‘Why am I needed?’ I said, oh! We can do this part; we can make it like a musical where everybody sings about Chamkila blaming him for the good or the bad. That’s the director’s point of view and that was exciting.”

The film presents the untold true story of Punjab’s original rockstar of the masses, Amar Singh Chamkila, who emerged from the shadows of poverty and rose to the heights of popularity in the ’80s due to the sheer power of his music, angering many along the way, which finally led to his assassination at the young age of 27.

Amar Singh Chamkila is all set to stream on Netflix India from April 12. The film stars Diljit Dosanjh and Parineeti Chopra.

“Chamkila was the most popular star during the 1980s, which was one of the worst periods of Punjab.

Punjab has had many dark periods and this, contemporarily, was one of the darkest periods.

We are talking about one artist, who was killed… I’ve shown just his life but that becomes symbolic to the lives of many other artists in Punjab and everywhere in the world, who have had the double stress of being popular and under attack at the same time,” Imtiaz Ali told PTI.