Ar Rahman





Allah Rakha Rahman (Tamil: ஏ.ஆர்.ரகுமான்; born January 6, 1967 as A. S. Dileep Kumar in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India) is an Academy award winning Indian film composer, record producer and musician. His work has garnered considerable acclaim and a large global fan base since his film scoring career began in the early 1990s. In addition to the Oscars, he has won many awards, including four National Film Awards, a BAFTA Award, Golden Globe and two Oscar awards. He is the first Indian to win 2 Oscars in one year.


Working in several of 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.R Rahman holds the credit for totally overhauling the style in which music was being made in India. Though with a career spanning just over a decade, Rahman has already sold over one hundred million records world-wide and more than two hundred million cassettes. This has brought AR Rahman into the category of the world’s top 25 all-time top selling recording artists.
Roja debut made AR Rahman bag the Rajat Kamal award for best music director at the National Film Awards. This was a historic moment as for the first time ever in Indian film industry, this award was being handed to a first-time film composer. There was no looking back for AR Rahman after this as film offers just started pouring in. There are now an impressive number of music tracks created by Rahman and all of them have sold like hot cakes across India and even abroad. He has made songs for super hit films like Rangeela, Dil Se, Taal, Rang De Basanti, and Bombay at all.
A. R. Rahman was born to a Tamil Hindu family. His father R. K. Shekhar, was a composer and conductor for Malayalam-language films of Keralite cinema. Rahman lost his father when he was 9 years old, and his family rented out musical equipment as a source of income. He converted to Islam from Hinduism in 1989 along with his sisters. During these formative years, Rahman served as a keyboard player and an arranger in bands such as "Roots", with childhood friend and percussionist Sivamani, John Anthony, Suresh Peters, JoJo and Raja. Rahman is the founder of the Chennai-based rock group, "Nemesis Avenue". He played the keyboard and piano, the synthesizer, the harmonium and the guitar. His curiosity in the synthesizer, in particular increased because, he says, it was the “ideal combination of music and technology". He began early training in music under Master Dhanraj. At the age of 11, he joined, as a keyboardist, the troupe of Ilaiyaraaja, one of many composers to whom musical instruments belonging to Rahman's father were rented. Rahman later played in the orchestra of M. S. Viswanathan and Ramesh Naidu, accompanied Zakir Hussain, Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan and L. Shankar on world tours and obtained a scholarship to the Trinity College of Music, where he graduated with a degree in Western classical music.