"Example: Before the advent of Rahman it took a hundred violin plaintive strings to show the impending romance; a whole huge orchestra swept up emotions. Rahman had changed that. He had made street sounds respectable, made you listen to a single beat say the rice husk being pounded, to natural sounds of daily implements and so on."
It is interesting - the comparison is clearly with respect to Hindi films. Because in SI films (especially Tamil and Telugu) Illayaraja had changed all that long back and he was the first to bring in natural sounds, western idioms and even silence as part of the background music. His lilting tunes are also the first where classical carnatic music was rendered with a blend of western music, something that AR Rahman has expertised over the last decade.
Indian film music is NOT equal to Hindi film music. Please do your research before painting broadly with one stroke.
