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| Biography |
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| | Put simply, A R Rahman is a phenomenon. Having successfully staked his claim as India's greatest ambassador in the world of music, Rahman has now sold well in excess of 100 million albums worldwide. To put that in perspective, that's as many albums as Madonna and Britney Spears put together and it places him firmly in Michael Jackson territory, an artist, incidentally, that Rahman has composed and performed with: Jackson was recently photographed wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a picture of Rahman and the message "Salute To You". Tandemically, glancing at the amount of prizes his extraordinary talent has garnered you'd be forgiven for thinking his house was entirely made up of shelves just to showcase them: in 1992 at the age of just 24 and for the film 'Roja he received the 'National Award for Best Music Direction' - an award he then duplicated five years later for Minaret Kanavu ; in years '92, '93 & '94 he was awarded the Stele Purashkar Award by the Governor of Tamil Nadu; in '92, 93, '94 and '95 he received the State Award; and for the year 1992 and every year since up until the present day he has been awarded the Filmfare Award. Others such as the Cinema Express Award, the Nagi Reddy Award, the Rajiv Gandhi Award and the Screen Award (for the albums 'Vande Mataram and 'Taal) followed and, at the turn of the century, to crown and acknowledge his unique contribution to Indian culture, Rahman was awarded the highest civilian honour of Padma Shree by the President of India. And now, as I write this, AR Rahman has won Best Music for the film Lagaan at the 47th Annual Manikchand Filmfare Awards in Bombay, whilst the film itself has been shortlisted for an Oscar this year in the Best Foreign Language Film category. |
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