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Allah Rakha Rahman was born A.S. Dileep Kumar on January 6, 1966, in Madras, to a musically affluent family. Dileep started learning the piano at the tender age of four. But at the age of nine, his father passed away. The pressure of supporting his family fell on Dileep. At the age of 11, he joined Illaiyaraja's troupe as a keyboard player. All this had an adverse affect on his education, and finally he dropped out of school altogether.
Eventually, he played with various orchestras, and accompanied Zakir Hussain on world tours. All this experience enabled him to earn a scholarship to the famed Trinity College of Music at Oxford University from where he obtained a degree in Western Classical Music.
Since Roja hit movie screens in South India in 1992, A.R. Rahman has been redefining the country's widely popular film music. Generally regarded as the finest Indian film composer of his time (and certainly the most commercially successful), Rahman produced music for nearly 35 wide-screen releases during his first five years in the industry. He has worked with many of his country's brightest music stars and a growing list of international luminaries like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan , Zakir Hussain , L. Shankar , Apache Indian , and David Byrne .
Rahman's blitzkreig continued, and his first break with Hindi films came with Ram Gopal Varma's Rangeela. Rahman unleashed his tunes and created mass frenzy. His Tanha tanha was seduction personified. Mani Ratnam picked him for his first Hindi film, Dil Se, and the rest, as they say, is history. His flirtation with Hindi films continued, and Subhash Ghai's Taal landed on his lap next. The composer displayed his versatility with the tunes he composed. Rahman also got an opportunity to work with Deepa Mehta, on the music of Fire and 1947 Earth.
His latest work includes Mani Ratnams's Yuva, Meenaxi: Tale of 3 Cities, Bose - The Forgotten Hero, Swades, Mangal Pandey - The Rising and Rang De Basanti. He is currently working on Mani Ratnam's next venture Guru, and on one of Shyam Benegal's most expensive ventures, undisclosed so far, which is set for release in the spring of 2006. The genius remains unstoppable! |
When Rahman arrived on the Indian music scene with his first film Roja, the music industry in India was going through a crisis with the retirement of older music composers and the lack of innovation in Indian film music.
