A.R.Rahman

After last month’s break, the ‘Artist of the month’ section is back on my blog, this time with an Indian music composer and singer who brought home our first ever Oscar award in the music category for his composition. The man who took Indian music the world over and got it recognized and acclaimed internationally. He is A.R. Rahman.

His complete name is Allah Rakha Rahman, and he was born on January 6, 1966 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. His real name is A.S. Dileep Kumar, dunno how many of you knew that. He was born in a musically inclined Mudaliar Tamil family. After the death of his father, R.K.Shekhar (who was a Chennai based composer and conductor for Malayalam films) at Rahman’s early age, his family rented out his father’s musical equipment as a source of income. He was raised by his mother.

Despite this stroke of ill-luck during his childhood, Rahman’s bond with music developed and formed deep roots in his heart. During the years of his growing up, he served as a keyboard player and an arranger in bands such as “Roots”, with childhood friend and percussionist Sivamani (the guy seen playing wierd and varied instruments in Rahman’s live shows), John Anthony, Suresh Peters, Jojo and Raja.

He is the founder of Chennai based rock group, “Nemesis Avenue” where he used to play the keyboard and the piano, the synthesizer, the harmonium and the guitar. He had particular fondness and creative bend towards the synthesizer, and he explains that by saying that the synthesizer is the “ideal combination of music and technology”. He joined the troup of Ilaiyaraja, as a keyboard player, which was one of the many composers to whom musical instruments belonging to his father were rented.

Having obtained early training in music under Master Dhanraj, Rahman later played in the orchestra of M.S.Viswanathan and Ramesh Naidu, accompanied by Ustad Zakir Hussain and other accomplished musicians on world tours and obtained a scholarship to the Trinity College of Music where he graduated with a degree in Western classical music.

In 1992, Rahman began his own music recording and mixing studio attached to the backyard of his house called the Panchathan Record Inn, which was developed into India’s most advanced recording studio. He initially composed music jingles for advertisements, Indian Television channels and music scores in documentaries, among other projects. In 1992, he was approached by film director Mani Ratnam to compose the score and soundtrack for Ratnam’s Tamil film Roja. The debut led Rahman to receive the Rajat Kamal award for Best Music Director at the National Film Awards, the first time ever by a first-time film composer. Rahman has since then gone on to win the award three more times (for his scores for Minsaara Kanavu (Electric Dreams, Tamil) in 1997, Lagaan (Tax, Hindi) in 2002, Kannathil Muthamittal (A Peck on the Cheek, Tamil) in 2003, the most ever by any composer.

Rangeela, directed by Ram Gopal Varma, marked Rahman’s debut for Hindi-language films made in the Mumbai film industry. Many successful scores for films including Dil Se and the percussive Taal followed.

Rahman has worked with Indian poets and lyricists such as Javed Akhtar, Gulzar, Mehboob, Vairamuthu and Vaali. His collaborations with some film directors have always resulted in successful soundtracks, particularly with the director Mani Ratnam who he has worked with since Roja, all of which have been hits, and the director S. Shankar.

Rahman attached and opened a developed extension studio to his Panchathan Record Inn in 2005 called AM Studios in Kodambakkam, Chennai — considered to be the most developed, equipped and high tech studio in Asia. In 2006, Rahman launched his own music label, KM Music. In 2008, he scored the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, for which he won a Golden Globe and two Academy Awards, becoming the first Indian citizen to do so. In the United States, the soundtrack topped the Dance/Electronic Albums chart and reached #4 on the Billboard 200 chart. The song “Jai Ho” reached #2 on the Eurochart Hot 100 Singles and #15 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Rahman has been involved in several projects aside from film. He made an album Vande Mataram (1997) on India’s 50th anniversary of independence to commercial success. He followed it up with an album for the Bharat Bala–directed video Jana Gana Mana, a conglomeration of performances by many leading exponents/artists of Indian classical music. Rahman has written jingles for ads and composed several orchestrations for athletic events, T.V. and internet media publications, documentaries and short films.

In 1999 Rahman, along with choreographers Shobhana and Prabhu Deva Sundaram and a Tamil cinema dancing troupe performed with Michael Jackson in Munich, Germany, for his “Michael Jackson and Friends Concert.” In 2002, he composed his maiden stage production Bombay Dreams (2002) following a commission from musical theatre composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, a success in London’s West End.

Rahman is involved in various charitable causes. In 2004, he was appointed as the Global Ambassador of the Stop TB Partnership, a project by WHO. He has shown support to charities including Save the Children, India, and worked with Cat Stevens / Yusuf Islam for his song “Indian Ocean”. The song featured a-ha keyboard player Magne Furuholmen and Travis drummer, Neil Primrose. The proceeds of the song went towards helping orphans in Banda Aceh, one of the areas worst affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.

He has won thirteen Filmfare Awards, four National Film Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe and two Academy Awards. Working in India’s various film industries, international cinema and theatre, by 2003, Rahman, in a career spanning over a decade, has sold more than 100 million records of his film scores and soundtracks worldwide, and sold over 200 million cassettes, making him one of the world’s all-time top selling recording artists. Time magazine has referred to him as the “Mozart of Madras” and several Tamil commentators have coined him the nickname “Isai Puyal”. In 2009, the magazine placed Rahman in the Time 100 list of ‘World’s Most Influential People’.

His wife’s name is Saira Banu and he has three children, Khadijah, Rahima, and Aameen. Rahman is a practising Sufi Muslim. He had become an atheist as a result of childhood struggles, but eventually converted Islam in 1989, the religion of his mother’s family. He is very devoted to his mother. During the Oscar Award, he paid her a tribute saying: “There is a Hindi dialogue ‘mere pass ma hai’ which means even if I have got nothing I have my mother here.”