A.R. Rahman

Allah Rakha Rahman ( Born on January 6, 1967 as A.S. Dileep Kumar in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India) is a two time Academy Award winning Indian film music composer, based out of Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He made his debut in 1992 with Mani Ratnam’s Tamil movie, Roja (Rose), which was subsequently dubbed into many languages. Ram Gopal Verma’s Rangeela was the first Hindi movie to have Rahman as the music director. He is a recipient of the Padma Shri. To date he has sold over 250 million albums worldwide making him one of the biggest selling artists of the last two decades.

His more unknown works include the AIRTEL jingle and lately the WORLDSPACE jingle.

Rang De Basanti (2006), Bombay, Dil Se and Roja are amongst his more popular works. He was also the music composer for the movies Lagaan (which was nominated for the Oscars for the Best Foreign Movie) and Yuva.

Three of the maestro’s songs have been added to the 56 song Oscar list. Khalabali and Lukha Chuppi from movie Rang de Basanti and Chan-Chan from the movie Water are included in the Oscar short list of songs.

A.R Rahman in the West:
He obtained a scholarship to Trinity College of Music in London and he graduated with a degree in Western classical music.

His recent works Include “Bombay Dreams” with Andrew Lloyd Weber, as well as a Mandarin movie, Between Heaven and Earth.

The movie “Inside Man” opens with the Hindi song “Chaiya Chaiya” composed by A.R.Rahman for the film “Dil Se”.