A. R. Rahman

A. R. Rahman
Allah-Rakha Rahman, born A. S. Dileep Kumar), is an Indian composer, singer-songwriter, music producer, musician and philanthropist. A. R. Rahman's works are noted for integrating Eastern classical music with electronic music, world music and traditional orchestral arrangements. Among his awards are two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, four National Film Awards, fifteen Filmfare Awards and thirteen Filmfare Awards South. Rahman's body of work for film and stage has given him the nickname of "the...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth6 January 1967
CountryIndia
My list would be Russia, Morocco, Turkey, and South Africa I'm doing which is somewhere I've wanted to go, Australia, Japan maybe, and China, if I have the energy to go and play at all those places.
The best way would be education and kids and all that stuff and then education and working education comes through. Then I started a music school and the music school now teaches kids to play the violin and the viola.
I listen to everything. As I told you, sometimes I just want to shut off from music and be silent. Then I play a song and it's refreshing. It's almost like initializing yourself. Recently I was in South Africa doing a press day for my tour. I listened to this band called "Freshly Ground." They were doing a live gig there so that's the last thing I've heard.
I basically love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that whether it's Indian or it's Western. But in India, I think it's limited to filler ?? music unfortunately. That's one thing I want to push in India where we have the infrastructure of an orchestra where you play Indian melodies with an orchestra and something different for a universal audience. It requires a lot of work from me.
When I travel with my kids abroad, I am not myself, but I'm more a father who wants to protect them. Sometimes, I am even aggressive about certain things and get surprised seeing myself like that: for instance, when people want to take pictures of them. I am fine if they want to take my pictures, but they are not public property.
I usually work on a film soundtrack for two years, turning in a song every few months, and that keeps my creative energy high, because I'm constantly rotating projects. The trick is to make sure I don't work too hard and get exhausted.
The more dollars the studio producers put in, the less freedom we have. If the budget hits $100m, they get scared - they'll take the existing score of a successful movie and expect composers to copy it, like wallpaper. The biggest challenge for any composer in Hollywood is to be as creative as possible within those boundaries.
My mother insisted that I pursue music. I rented out my father's musical equipment and earned some money. As a child, I wasn't sure about a career goal, but I was always fascinated by electronic gadgets, specially musical equipment.
I think I can get away, sometimes, with walking in the streets and not getting noticed. I like that. I want my work to get noticed, not me. And it's slowly getting there, which is good.
I like to see a film and then start scoring it in my mind while doing something unrelated. You just grasp a film and start working, and something unpredictable comes out from a third element. The mind, the more active it is, the more productive it is.
I joined the Madras Christian College but dropped out after three months. Telugu music director Ramesh Naidu asked me to assist him, and I did so for over a year. I did think of rejoining college, but by then, I was discovering the musician in me. I worked with Illaya Raja and Raj Koti and soon shifted to commercials. This led to movie offers.
Compared with other Indian film composers, I only write about six movies a year. Others write up to 60.
I was famous from the age of 13, and after a while you become immune to it - in a good way. You look at positives and what you can do with it.
While my mother wanted me to be a musician, I wanted to become an electronic engineer.