A.R. Rahman

Born in 1967 in Chennai in southern India, A. R. Rahman began his career as a studio keyboardist before moving into composing for advertising and, in the early 1990s, for Tamil cinema. The soundtrack to Roja in 1992 launched him as a film composer, followed by notable scores for Bombay (1995), Dil Se.. (1998), Taal (1999) and Lagaan (2001), at the crossroads of Tamil cinema and Bollywood. Rahman’s music sits between orchestral film scoring, Indian classical music, pop, electronic rhythms and Western influences, with a sustained emphasis on vocal arrangements and the mixing of languages. From the 2000s he broadened his activities internationally — with the musical Bombay Dreams in London in 2002, co-written with Andrew Lloyd Webber — and in Hollywood with the music for Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and 127 Hours (2010), notably collaborating with director Danny Boyle. He also composes for theatre, for projects often described as “world” music, and for institutional commissions, while remaining a central figure in Indian film music.