A.R. Rahman, The Music Genius, in fact A.S. Dilip Kumar, was born in a family of music with his father K.A.Sekhar, renowned music director in South India composing music for films in the early childhood of A.R. Rahman.
After the death of his father, A.S Dilip Kumar, renamed himself as A.R. Rahman for his strong faith in ISLAM, began playing key boards at the age of 9. At the age of 11, he was giving accompaniment for under the likes of "IlayaRaja", "M.S.Vishwanathan" and "Ramesh Naidu". The guide lines given to him by these great music directors and the knowledge in music he gained through working with these music composers placed A.R. Rahman in a right place at times of difficulty.
Through all the hardships he faced, he managed to qualify for the scholarship in Trinity Music College Of London. Afterwards, he returned to India with a dream of bringing an international and contemporary world perspective to Indian Music. He put up a state of the art sound and recording studio and began experimenting in sound engineering, sound design and sound production by a collection of sounds creating one of the most comprehensive sonic libraries in ASIA.
A.R. Rahman had to start his career as a commercial music director composing jingles for ad campaigns that include leading Indian Corporations as "Parry's", "Tata", "Titan" and others for six years until when, at a party, he was, quite unexpectedly, previleged to be introduced to one of the best directors in India, Mani Ratnam who had given him a chance in his movie that launched A.R. Rahman's debut and amazingly shot him to the limelight.
In a music world dominated filmi scores, A.R. Rahman has scored about a dozen hit films in a span of eight years, whose audio sales crossed 2.5 million units. The first movie, "ROJA" fetched A.R. Rahman the "National Film Award" in 1992 and thrust him on to the top place. In 5 years since, he scored music for a lot of block buster films namely - "Pudhiya Mugam", "Gentleman", "Kizhaku Seemalyilae", "Duet", "KADALAN", "Bombay", "May", "Madbam", "Indian", "Mutbu Kadal Desam","Love Birds", "Jeans", "Oke Okkadu", etc,.
In 1995, his sound track for "Bombay" crossed sales of 5 million units signalling A.R. Rahman's arrival as the "King of Indian Pop" with sales of more than 40 million albums over a period of three years. Today, A.R. Rahman is the heart throb of the music world and all time great music directors in the field. He, in "ROJA" proved that the traditional tunes too could touch the hearts. And songs as "Thiruda Thiruda", "Gentleman", "Rangeela", "Kaghal Desam" and "Minsara Kanavu" established him as a prodigy.
A.R. Rahman, being very much religious and totally dedicated to his craft, has a great love for music of different traditions. "Bach", "Beethoven", "Mozart", "Reggae", "Rock" and "Carnatic" music are his first priorities. His inspirational, infectious numbers won him a lot of praise in India. The Tamil movie "Minsara Kanavu" earned him the award for "Best Music" in May '97. He has been honoured with a "Rajat Kamal Award" for "Best Music Director", "The FilmFare Award", "Cinema Express Award", "Telugu Academy Puraskar Award" for the year 1992-94, "Bommala Nagi Reddy Award", "Sumu Award", "Rajiv Gandhi Award" and etc,.
A.R. Rahman has been hailed as a music genius by world artists including "Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan", with whom he performs a duet in his first pop album, Vande Mataram. He is involved in projects with "Zakir Hussain", "David Byrne", "Talvin Singh" and "Apache Indian". Internationally too, A.R. Rahman has remarkable recognition that "David Byrne" was so impressed and asked him to take part in a few sessions for his new project. Personally, A.R. Rahman has a passion to sing in the filmi tracks. Vande Mataram, his first pop album is the first to showcase him as a singer and his ambition to place his sound track on the world music stage. A concert was held in "Kaula Lampur" in Oct 1965 where he performed in front of a crowd of 45000.
As an individual personality, A.R. Rahman leads an extremely devote religious life and credits all his musical inspiration to ALLAH. He comes across to say, " music speaks, statements don't and none can completely be original because the notes are already there: from the notes we form a rag and from rag a tune. It's the methodology. As far as i can, to my conscience, I try to be original. The rest is upto ALLAH". As A.R. Rahman takes his new project, Vande Mataram, to the world, he reflects on his immense popularity on the sub-continent and the globe as he says, "music is international - only cultures are different". A.R. Rahman, 30 years now, has still a long way to go ahead.
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I like AR a lot his ROja was a masterpiece, I likelots of his otherworks and think he is great. ๐
Edited by teenindia_usa - 19 years ago