Published By: Sayan Paul

A R Rahman: 12 lesser known facts about the music maestro

A R Rahman, a genius musician who rules the hearts of millions with his soulful music.

A R Rahman, known as "The Mozart of Madras", is undoubtedly one of the greatest music composers ever born in India as well as the whole world. He started his music career with Mani Ratnam's film 'Roja' in 1992 and since then, he has been mesmerizing us with his brilliant composition and melodious voice. It's really difficult to choose any one of his music albums because simply, he hasn't composed a single bad song in his whole career. Here, we have gathered 12 fascinating facts about him that you probably didn't know.

  1. A R Rahman was born in a Hindu family and his original name was Dileep Kumar. Although it's not still clear exactly why he changed his religion, some say that a Sufi saint cured his fatally ill young sister and then, he embraced Islam.
  2. As a kid, Rahman appeared in Doordarshan's 'Wonder Balloon' and became popular as he had an exceptional talent of playing 4 keyboards at once.
  3. India's most popular and arguably the best music composer A R Rahman didn't want to be a musician when he was a child. His childhood dream was to become a computer engineer.
  4. Rahman made his debut as a music composer in the Tamil film 'Roja' and as soon as the music album released, he gained huge appreciations and popularity. He earned 25,000 rupees for the project and won a "National Award for Best Music Composer".
  5. He is the first Asian to win 2 Oscars in the same year (and that incredible year was 2009).
  6. His song "Jai Ho" in 'Slum Dog Millionaire' brought him a Oscar. However, the song was originally composed for the 2008 film 'Yuvvraaj'.
  7. Not only 'Slum Dog Millionaire', Rahman has worked in several other Hollywood films and even got his second Oscar nomination for the film '127 Hours' in 2011.
  8. His composition for the theme song in 'Bombay' was featured in the French TV commercial 'Volvic' in 2000.
  9. In his honour, a street in Markham, Ontario, Canada has been named 'Allah-Rakha Rahman st' in 2013.
  10. He is the only Indian who has been featured in the "List of best-selling music artists of the world".
  11. Airtel's signature tune is the most downloaded mobile music in the world, with over with over 150 million downloads. And guess what, the tune was composed by none other than A R Rahman.
  12. Rahman likes to compose at night just to avoid the disturbance of phone calls, messages and emails.
A R Rahman is an unparallel talent. Also, he is a very humble person and after achieving so much success, he still stays in touch with his roots.