AR Rahman Birthday special: 7 lesser-known facts about the music maestro

As legendary music composer and singer AR Rahman turns 55, let us look at some interesting facts about the Oscar winner musical intellectual.

AR Rahman turns 54 years old today, January 6. He is an inspiration for all budding music stars in India and worldwide. Rahman started his career as a music composer in the Kollywood (Tamil) film industry. His first film was with Mani Ratnam's popular film Roja, and the rest is history. Roja's music got him his first National Award for best music direction. Let’s now take a look at 7 known facts about Rahman.

Rahman composed a special song for the Indian release of Avengers: Endgame. He was the first Asian to have won 2 Oscars in the same year. 

Rahman was presented with these prestigious awards for the 2009 movie Slumdog Millionaire, two Grammys, one BAFTA and one Golden Globe Awards. 

AR Rahman aka Allahrakha Rahman's birth name was AS Dileep Kumar. He was born in a Hindu family. When he was 23, he met his spiritual Guru, Qadri Islam, and embraced Islam.

AR Rahman was seen in Doordarshan’s popular show Wonder Baloon during childhood. Here, he garnered a lot of fame as the kid who could play four keyboards at once.

Rahman had once said that the background score of the song Hai Rama from Rangeela was inspired by the 1960 classic cult Mughal-e-Azam. 

AR Rahman's Twitter

Rahman's father RK Shekhar, was a song composer in Tamil and Malayalam films. Rahman's son Ameen share the same birth date that is January 6.

A few years ago, in 2013, a street in Markham, Ontario, Canada, was named after AR Rahman. He turned director with the virtual reality film, Le Musk. In April 2017, Le Musk was shown at the ‘NAB’, Las Vegas, with multi-sensory 'Voyager' chairs.