India’s finest music maestro A R Rehman, whose compositions reflect a grand fusion between east and west, walked away with two richly deserved statuettes for the best original score and best song in 'Slumdog Millionaire' - at the recently held glittering 2009 Oscar awards ceremony. A R Rehman, who became the first Indian to bag two Oscar awards, said while accepting the awards, “All my life, I have had a choice of love and hate. I chose love and I am here.”
Early life and initial travails
A.S. Dileep Kumar or Allah Rakha Rahman (A R Rehman) as we know him today was born on January 6 1966, in Chennai, India’s fourth largest metropolis. Rahman lost his father when he was barely nine years old, and his family rented out musical equipments to make a living. His mother ensured that financial strife did not come in the way of her son's aspirations.
At the age of eleven, Rehman joined a well-known music troupe as a keyboard player and a session musician on soundtracks. The compelling necessity to go for employment at a relatively tender age adversely affected Rahman's education. Lack of attendance and indifference on the part of the school management forced Rehman to finally abandon all educational pursuits at the age of sixteen.
During these formative years, Rahman served as a keyboard player and an organizer of bands. He became an adept at playing the keyboard, piano, the synthesizer, the harmonium and the guitar.
Rehman was partcularly enamored of the synthesizer because he felt it was the “ideal combination of music and echnology". Rehman then trotted the globe with various orchestras including some famous ones. His exposure to world-wide audiences helped him earn a scholarship and obtain a degree in Western Classical Music from Trinity College of Music, Oxford University.
Career graph
It was sometime during 1987 that Rahman ventured into composing jingles for television commercials. He composed more than 300 jingles in a matter of five years and both his first album of Muslim devotional songs titled 'Deen Isai Malai' and the English album, 'Set Me Free” failed to make an impact in the market.
In the year 1992, Rahman founded his own music recording and mixing studio in the backyard of his house. The small studio called Panchathan Record Inn is today one of India's most well equipped and advanced recording studios.
In the same year, he was approached by one of India’s frontline film directors, Mani Ratnam to compose the score and soundtrack for his Tamil film “Roja”. The film’s score was widely applauded and met with record sales and since then there has been no looking back for Rehman. Rahman has composed music for more than 130 Indian films, incorporating jazz, rock, Indian pop and Western classical music.
In a career spanning over a decade, Rehman has sold more than 100 million records of his film songs and sound tracks worldwide and over 200 million audio cassettes making him one of the world's all-time favorite recording artists.
Awards and recognition
Rehman has won many awards, including four National Film Awards, Mauritius National Award, Malaysian National Award and an honorary award from Stanford University for contributions to global music, BAFTA award, Golden Globe and now the two Oscar Awards.
The other notable awards include the prestigious Lata Mangeshkar Award (April 2005), Padmashri from Government of India (2000), Filmfare award (1999), R D Burman Award (1993), Sanskriti Award from Delhi based Sanskriti foundation (1994), Kalaimamani Award from Tamil Nadu Government (1995) and Rajiv Gandhi Award.
Rehman is a very unostentatious person and avoids all flamboyance. He is a deeply religious and God-fearing person and in his own words: “Religious sounds rather vulgar these days but I am more of a spiritual person. For me and my music, spirituality is the most important element and I don't think I can create the kind of music I do, if I don't practice spirituality.”
To know more about Rahman, read this Wikipedia Information.which is also the reference material for this article.
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