He’s well known for his soulful music and plethora of awards and honours, but still, there’s a lot about him that not many people. On AR Rahman’s birthday, here are some lesser known facts about the singer-composer:
- Rahman was born into a Hindu family as Dileep Kumar. At the age of 23, the music composer went ahead to embrace Islam, after he met his spiritual guru, Qadri Islam.
- Before he stepped in the entertainment industry, he was seen in Doordarshan’s Wonder Balloon as a kid where he shot to fame for being the kid who could play 4 keyboards at once
- Mani Ratnam was the first one to spot the talent in Rahman and the 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 National Film Award along with huge success, popularity, and admiration.
- Rahman married Saira and his three children namely- Ameen Khatija and Rahima. Interestingly, his son, Ameen share the same birth date, that is 6th January.
- 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.
- Not many know that the Oscar-winning song “Jai Ho” was initially composed for the Salman Khan starrer- Yuvraaj!
- Apart from Slumdog Millionaire, Rahman has also composed great scores for other Hollywood films like 127 Hours and Lord of War.
- 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’.
- To honour the singer-composer, a street in Markham, Ontario, Canada, was named after him in November 2013.
- Reportedly, Airtel’s signature tune which is composed by Rahman, is said to be the world’s most downloaded mobile music with over 150 million downloads.Here’s wishing a very happy birthday to AR Rahman!
Comments