ए.आर. रहमान

A. R. Rahman, born Allah Rakha Rahman (originally A. S. Dileep Kumar) on 6 January 1967 in Madras, Madras State (present-day Chennai, Tamil Nadu), is an Indian composer, record producer, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist renowned for his work in Indian and international cinema, predominantly in Tamil and Hindi films. His father, R. K. Shekhar, was a film score composer and conductor for Malayalam films; Rahman began learning piano at age four and took over responsibility for the family's musical equipment business after his father's death when he was nine.

Rahman's film-scoring career began in the early 1990s at his in-house Panchathan Record Inn studio, with director Mani Ratnam's Tamil film Roja (1992) — later dubbed into Hindi and other languages — earning him his first National Film Award and Filmfare Award for Best Music Direction. He went on to become one of the most influential composers in Indian cinema, known for blending Western classical, Carnatic, folk, jazz, reggae, and rock influences, and extended his work into Hindi films and international projects, gaining global recognition with Slumdog Millionaire (2008).

Rahman is the recipient of two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, seven National Film Awards, and numerous Filmfare Awards across Tamil and Hindi cinema. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan, its third-highest civilian award, in 2010.