10 A.R. Rahman Milestones That Define His 25 Year Long Musical Journey

Ever since he won his first award for composing the music for Mani Ratnam’s Roja in 1992, A.R. Rahman has been synonymous with awards. The maestro has gone to bag almost all popular music awards in the world including Oscars, Grammy, BAFTA, Golden Globe, India’s National or Filmfare awards. He just seems to be unstoppable with the honours and felicitations bestowed upon him. One can’t imagine where he’ll end.

Mani Ratnam’s Roja opened the doors for this musical genius who never looked back ever since. His soundtrack for Roja is still so refreshing that no one can imagine that he had composed it 25 years ago. No wonder the soundtrack was listed in TIME's ‘10 Best Soundtracks’ of all time in 2005. 

Talk about world’s all-time greatest soundtracks and Rahman’s compositions not among them aren’t possible. His compositions for Lagaan which became chartbusters in 2001 is ranked at No. 45 on Amazon.com's ‘The 100 Greatest World Music Albums of All Time’ list in 2009. A rare feat indeed.

The Mozart of Madras was listed among ‘World's Most Influential People’ in 2009 by Time’s magazine. His inclusion came as no surprise for his followers and fans who’ve been in awe of his music ever since the songs of Roja made it to the top of the charts in 1992.

The A.R. Rahman fever gripped the world in a big way including Canada which named a street in Markham, Ontario, Canada (close to downtown Toronto), after him in his honour in November 2013. Canada presented him with the honour in commemoration of 100 years of Indian Cinema.

He became the first Indian musician to perform at the White House on an invite from former US President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. Jai Ho, the documentary based on his life and journey of winning the Oscar and Grammy was screened at the White House. The documentary explored the evolution of his style of music which has been a fusion of Eastern and Western technology.

He set up the K.M. Music Conservatory, an academy for aspiring musicians at Chennai. The conservatory has come to be known as an institution where one explores, learns, experiments and transfers music in all forms. Rahman once said that music is all about transporting people; speaking a language that languages often fail to express. It is such thoughts that keep this maestro going.

His record sales of albums and songs talk volumes about his worldwide popularity. He is one of the most popular musicians having record sales of more than 200 million albums worldwide with composing soundtracks for over 100 Indian films including Tamil, Hindi and English.

He is probably the only music composer to have recorded songs in nearly 13 languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu, English, Kannada, Mandarin, Persian, Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali, Sinhalese and Japanese.

In 2004, he became one of the world’s top-selling recording artists when he sold almost 200 million cassettes and 150 million recordings of his soundtracks. His Airtel signature line was then the world’s most downloaded music with 150 million downloads making him one the world’s most iconic and followed musician.