My experience at Marakkuma Nenjam: AR Rahman’s concert in Chennai
I’ve been listening to AR Rahman’s songs since my childhood, thanks to my parents. We used to watch the video songs on Gemini Music and grooved to his songs.
It didn’t take much time for me to become his fan after I started listening to his songs, starting with Roja. It was during my B.Tech that I explored cinema and in turn music, which made me listen to his playlists alone. Even as I’m writing this blog post, I’m listening to his songs.
November 2017 — I was lucky enough to attend Ilayaraja’s concert in Hyderabad, and I enjoyed it immensely. The experience was amazing and I was lucky enough to be close to the stage and watch him perform.
In the same month and at the same venue, AR Rahman also had a concert. I didn’t have any money or free tickets at that time and couldn’t go. I have been waiting for another ARR concert for the last 6 years. I’ve become this person who listens to at least a few of his songs every day.
In 2021, my sister Sameera gave me “Notes of a Dream,” the biography of ARR. My love and respect for him increased manifold while reading the book. And now my desire to see him perform live went to the next level.
In 2023, ARR had a Sufi concert in Chennai and my friend Sasank attended it. He shared some videos from that concert and I was even more excited to attend his concert.
When the Marakkuma Nenjam concert was announced this year, Sasank informed me about it and I tried to book the tickets for the Chennai concert, which was originally scheduled for August. I had some personal work, so I had to let it go without booking the tickets.
But the concert didn’t happen because it was raining that day and it was postponed to September 10th. I booked my tickets right away, thanks to Sasank.
On the day of the concert, we left our house around 5 pm as the event was to start at 7 pm. Due to the traffic on ECR, we parked the car outside and walked to the venue (~500m). The whole street towards the venue was filled with people.
ARR started the concert and by the time we reached the venue, the first one/two songs were finished. The crowd was cheering for the man and he was vibing with the audience. It was a good sight.
Sequence of the songs:
The concert structure (order of songs) was well planned. To keep up the hype and hook the audience, there were welcome songs — from Kandukondain Kandukondain to Maamannan. Haricharan sang “Enna Solla Pogirai” followed by Shuba, Shweta Mohan and Rakshita Suresh singing other songs.
This was followed by Hariharan singing Vennilave, Nila Kaaigiradhu and Shakthisree Gopalan singing Nenjukkule and Nenjame Nenjame. As the artists performed on stage, the audience sang along. ARR then sang the most famous “Yakkai Thiri” and we all enjoyed it.
To our surprise, Vadivelu came on stage and sang two songs — one from Maamannan and another from Sangamam. He recalled his memories with ARR and both of them sang the Sangamam song together.
After that ARR came with a segment of Ragas. He’d show the name of the raga on the screen and then perform a song based on that raga. Though I couldn’t remember the raga names, the whole segment was good. There were 6–8 songs in that segment.
This was followed by a rap segment where Blaaze, ADK and other artists rocked the stage. There were several songs by them and it was energetic. If I remember correctly, Shubha, Ameen and ARR also performed a song from their latest album.
The team also performed a total of four songs from Ponniyin Selvan — Ponni Nadhi, Chinnanjiru Nilave (Marumurai), Veera Raja and Aga Naga.
These songs were performed towards the end: Mustafa, Urvashi and ending with Marakkuma Nenjam.
Overall, the concert was expected to go well for everyone, but unfortunately it didn’t.
First of all, there was a management failure. I don’t know if the tickets were oversold or not, but the crowd at the venue was definitely over capacity. The street leading from ECR to the venue was completely overcrowded. There were no signboards to direct people to the venue according to their ticket segment (I had a diamond pass). There were way too many people and it took us a while to find our way to the gate.
Luckily we got our tags(just having passes doesn’t guarantee entry to the venue, we had to get tags by showing our passes) the day before at the Express Avenue Mall. I say “luckily” because there were people at the venue trying to get their tags, but the box office was nowhere to be seen. There were no directions and no volunteers to help people navigate.
After a long walk, we found the entrance for Gold Passes, and right next to it was the entrance for Diamond Passes. The gate was narrow and there was no place to stand in line.
For my Diamond pass, we were supposed to have chairs, but there was hardly any place to stand and watch the concert. There were families with old people and children. They were standing because all the chairs were fully occupied.
In addition, the speakers on our side were not working and we couldn’t hear the songs properly. For most of the concert, the volume was down and the crowd was chanting “volume” and “refund” in unison. Few people left the concert in the middle because the experience was terrible and no one cared about one part of the audience.
Also, the screens weren’t working properly. They were off most of the time and we couldn’t even see the artists on the screen. The worst experience to be honest.
We left the concert a bit early so we wouldn’t get stuck in traffic and found a lot of people coming back even though there were 3–4 songs left.
When I got home, I opened Twitter and found horrible stories of girls being groped and molested at the concert. I was shocked to hear about them and my heart goes out to them. I pray they feel better soon. It was unfortunate.
My friends and family who knew I was at the concert contacted me to check on me and they were relieved to find out I was safe and sound. It was really sad to read the anecdotes of the trauma that people went through at the concert. I also learned that many people were sent back by the organizers due to overcrowding, which is even worse. I feel sorry for the people who had worse experiences at the concert.
I wish it was well organized and taken care of by ACTC Events, and only wish ARR would have overseen the arrangements himself, or at least someone from his team would have taken that responsibility and not left it all to ACTC. I hope this doesn’t happen again for anyone.
