The Absolutely Remarkable Rahman - India’s music genius hits the high notes

Allah Rakha Rahman, simply translated as God Save Rahman. How appropriate for the man who has become the toast of the world with his score for blockbuster “Slumdog Millionaire”, who can be credited with taking the Indian sound across the seas and who has for long comfortably straddled the worlds of not just classical and popular music but also Bollywood and Broadway.

But then, Rahman, a household name in India for his contribution to the world of Hindi cinema, known as Bollywood, as well as regional cinema in the south, has been the cynosure of all ears since 1992 when he burst on the Indian musical scene with his refreshingly different tunes for the Tamil film “Roja”.

The film was subsequently made in Hindi, giving mainstream Hindi film music a new meaning altogether: the rest as they say is history.

He has moved on from being a celebrated composer to the music supernova who has entered the record books as the first Indian to get a Golden Globe, the first Indian to get the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for music and the first Indian to get two Oscars.

With “Slumdog Millionaire”, Danny Boyle’s rags to riches drama based on a book by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, the 41-year-old Rahman has struck gold - and so has India and Indian music.

The film got 10 Oscar nominations, including three for Rahman - for Best Original Score and two for the Best Original Song for a motion picture with his songs “Jai Ho” and “O Saaya”. This is another first for an Indian.

He could get, at best, two Oscars. And he did, for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for “Jai Ho”.

Rahman was the picture of modesty as he stepped up to get his awards — “Ellapugazhum Iraivanukee (May all praise be to the almighty),” he said in Tamil after accepting his first statuette.

After thanking God, he turned to his mother, who had accompanied him to the glittering ceremony.

“There is a dialogue from an old Hindi film - “Mere paas ma hai” - which means I have my mother. My mother is here, I have her blessings. I am glad she could be here,” said an overwhelmed Rahman.

For India, the “Slumdog” awards story, which some say is as improbable as the film itself about an 18-year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai who goes on to win a staggering Rs.20 million ($410,000) on India’s “Who Wants

To Be A Millionaire?” game show, is not just about the Baftas and the Oscars.

It is also recognition of popular Indian cinema in the West that has for long shunned Indian movies as being too long and too full of song-and-dance sequences. Rahman’s exuberant score has shattered all those perceptions and shown that the West likes the Indian sound.

Composing music for British director Boyle was a challenge, said the self-effacing celebrity.

Boyle simply wanted a score with energy and an edge for his film. There was also a twist. The perfectionist Rahman was given just three weeks to plan and execute the score.

“We had met and talked about it for about two months. But I had to finish it quickly as Boyle wanted to start mixing the film by August,” Rahman told IANS in an interview.

“It’s probably one-fifth of the time I normally take. For one thing, a normal film has about 150 cues. But in this one there were only 17-18 cues

for me. Boyle uses music very less but very efficiently,” he added.

Like the film’s protagonist Jamal, Rahman’s is also an inspiring story of the everyday struggle for survival that has ended on the glittering red

carpets of showbiz.

Born A.S. Dileep Kumar to a Tamil Hindu family, his father R.K. Shekhar, a composer who directed music for Malayalam movies, died when he was just nine. The family was forced to rent out musical equipment. A few years later, the  budding maestro joined noted composer Ilayaraja’s troupe as a keyboardist and computer programmer to support his mother and three sisters.

After working with several renowned composers like Vishwanathan-Ramamurthy, Zakir Hussain and L. Shankar, he set out on his own to compose jingles and scores for popular Indian television features and has composed more than 300 jingles.

During this period, he also earned a degree in western classical music from the Trinity College of Music, London, and went on to set up his own in-house studio called Panchathan Record-Inn at Chennai, which is said to be Asia’s most sophisticated and hi-tech studio.

In 1989, Dileep Kumar became A.R. Rahman, converted to Islam along with his family due to personal reasons.

The Bollywood debut came a couple of years later. And there was no looking back after that.

In 1997, Sony Music signed up Rahman as its first artist in South Asia to commemorate 50 years of Indian Independence. The result was “Vande Mataram”, the anthem of Indian patriotism, an album that succeeded in rekindling the nationalistic spirit and was an instant hit with Indian youth.

The musical genius not only won hearts in India but also made a mark on the global music scene.

He got his first international break when Andrew Lloyd Webber invited him to compose music for the Broadway musical “Bombay Dreams”, which won him immense fame.

He also composed for the stage adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord Of The Rings” that premiered in Canada in 2006 and in London in 2007.

Apart from composing music Rahman is also involved in social work. He launched the A.R. Rahman Foundation to tackle the issue of poverty by providing education to the poor and equipping them with knowledge and skills to earn a living.

An outcome of this initiative was his first single in the English language

called “Pray for me brother” and all proceeds from sales of the album went to his foundation.

As the awards collect, Indians can only say a collective and joyous “Jai Ho”.