Happy Birthday A.R Rahman
By
RUBY ZAIDI
Musician Allah Rakha Rahman is a living legend, undoubtedly. He was born on January 6, 1967. Although A. R Rahman is an Indian music composer but he is globally famous as a music icon. He is also a record producer, singer and lyricist (songwriter), He is more active in Tamil and Hindi films, but he occasional forays in international cinema, as well as an arrangement of the 20th Century Studios fanfare for Star Studios. He is a winner of six National Film Awards, two Academy Awards Oscars, two Grammy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, fifteen Filmfare Awards and seventeen Filmfare Awards South. The Government of India has conferred him with the Padma Bhushan.
Some more facts
Bollywood reporter wishes, A.R. Rahman happy returns of the day on his 55th birth anniversary!
Here are some interesting facts about the internationally acclaimed music composer:
1. Before AR Rahman stepped into the world of the entertainment industry, he made his first appearance in Doordarshan’s “Wonder Balloon” program where he shot to fame for being the only child who could play 4 keyboards at once.
2. Mani Ratnam was the first one to spot the talent in Rahman and began film scoring for Ratnam’s Tamil film Roja in 1992. He got a sum of 25000 rupees for the project, and he became the recipient of the National Film Award along with huge success, popularity, and admiration.
3. A street in Markham, Ontario, Canada, has been named in his honour in November 2013.
4. AR Rahman is the first Asian to have won 2 Oscars in the same year for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. The Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri recipient has also won 4 National Awards.
5. Rahman married Saira and his three children namely- Ameen Khatija and Rahima. Interestingly, his son, Ameen shares the same birth date, which is 6th January.
6. Apart from Slumdog Millionaire, Rahman has also composed great scores for other Hollywood films like 127 Hours and Lord of War.
7. AR Rahman joined hands with Mick Jagger, Dave Stewart, and Joss Stone to introduce a completely different kind of music under the name SuperHeavy. Stewart termed SuperHeavy as a ‘mad alchemist type experiment’.
8. The Oscar-winning song “Jai Ho” was initially composed for the Salman Khan starrer- Yuvraaj
9. Airtel’s signature tune, composed by Rahman, is the world’s most downloaded mobile music with over 150 million downloads.
10. The French TV commercial for Volvic starring Zinedine Zidane in 2000 featured a sample from Rahman’s theme song from the movie ‘Bombay.’
happybirthday