Skor Lagu Filem Yang Paling Menakutkan

Saya yakin anda akan bersetuju muzik yang memainkan peranan penting dalam filem . Skor muzik yang baik membantu memindahkan cerita, mencipta ghairah dan memancing emosi. Seram, ketegangan dan filem thriller memanfaatkan kekuatan muzik untuk membina pendahuluan penampilan dan takutkan adegan tertentu. Berikut adalah beberapa skor paling menakutkan yang pernah ditulis untuk filem-filem seram.

Carrie - Berdasarkan novel karya Stephen King,filem ini tentang seorang gadis remaja yang mempunyai kuasa telekinetic, salah satu kegemaran saya. Pino Donaggio menulis skor untuk filem ini, yang paling terkenal adalah "School in Flames."


Jaws - Tema utama filem ini tahun 1975, yang mungkin menakutkan setiap pengunjung pantai bagi sesiapa yang pernah menonton filem ini. Skor lagu bagi filem ini dicipta oleh John Williams. Selalunya orang akan mengunakan atau mengajuk lagu tema filem ini ketika anda sedang di pantai. Williams meraih Academy Award untuk skor filem yang tetap menjadi salah satu tema filem yang paling dikenali sehingga saat ini.


Halloween - John Carpenter, Pakar bagi filem "keganasan," mengarahkan filem seram ini pada 1978 tentang pesakit jiwa bernama Michael Myers melarikan diri. Carpenter sendiri menulis skor untuk filem ini yang dilaporkan mengaut $ 75.000.000 di seluruh dunia yang pada asalnya hanya mempunyai kewangan hanya $ 300,000.


Psycho - Filem 1960 diarahkan oleh Alfred Hitchcock legenda dan berdasarkan novel Robert Bloch. Adegan paling terkenal dan tak dapat dilupakan adalah pada babak lagi "shower scene." Ganas dari adegan yang diperbesar oleh skor yang luar biasa Bernard Herrmann's.

Rosemary's Baby - Tema utama dari filem 1968 dicipta oleh Krzysztof Komeda. Muzik boleh digambarkan sebagai pengantar tidur dengan undertones sinis, sebuah perlawanan yang sempurna untuk plot filem. Tema daripada "Rosemary's Baby" selalu membawakan perasaan menakutkan, bahkan sebelum mempunyai kesempatan untuk menonton filem ini.

The Exorcist - 1973 Lagu berjudul "tubular Bells" yang ditulis oleh Mike Oldfield. Muzik itu sendiri adalah tidak menakutkan berbanding dengan nilai lain. Tapi yang digunakan dalam filem, muzik berubah menjadi salah satu nilai yang paling mengerikan untuk sebuah filem seram.

The Omen - 1976 filem amat menyeramkan, paduan diantara suara Choral dan digital bunyi dahsyat dan menakutkan-terdengar berjudul "Ave Satani." skor ini ditulis oleh Jerry Goldsmith yang meraih Academy Award untuk sumbangannya kepada skor muzik layar perak. Banyak versi dari "Ave Satani" telah tercatat sejak pertama kali keluar, tetapi versi asal tetap kegemaran.


The Sixth Sense - ketegangan menakutkan ini menyentuh tentang seorang anak yang "melihat orang mati" keluar pada tahun 1999. Nilai indah ini ditulis oleh James Newton Howard dan merupakan campuran dari muzik menyentuh dan pulsa-membesarkan, khususnya "Suicide Ghost," "Hanging Ghosts" and "Kyra's Tape."

"Kain Pelikat" Anuar Zain

Shahrul Anuar bin Zain (lahir 15 Februari 1970; juga dikenali sebagai Anuar Zain), merupakan seorang penyanyi Malaysia yang terkenal. Shahrul Anuar Bin Zain berbintang Aquarius, dilahirkan pada 15 Februari 1970 di Merlimau, Melaka.

Beliau merupakan adik kepada penyanyi wanita, Ziana Zain dan merupakan anak kedua daripada 5 adik-beradik dan satu-satunya yang masih bujang antara mereka.

Antara lagu-lagu yang hitz adalah seperti Keabadian Cinta, Sesucinya Cintamu dan banyak lagi.

Perjalanan seni

Adik kepada penyanyi Ziana Zain ini merupakan orang terawal yang bergiat ke dunia hiburan pada zaman remaja apabila beliau telah menghasilkan album duet bersama Elena. Ketika itu lagu yang amat diminati ialah "Kain Pelikat".




Namun, perjuangan pasangan duet ini akhirnya terpaksa dibubarkan atas sebab-sebab yang tidak dapat dielakkan. Setelah kerjaya seni Anuar tidak dapat diteruskan, Anuar mengambil keputusan bekerja bersama syarikat penerbangan MAS, pada penghujung 80-an.

Hampir sepuluh tahun menyepikan diri, akhirnya pada 1998 Anuar Zain muncul kembali apabila beliau menandatanggani kontrak bersama syarikat Warner Music Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. dan menghasilkan sebuah album yang bertajuk 'Anuar Zain' yang mengandungi lagu-lagu popular seperti "Bila Resah", "Jangan Bersedih Lagi", "Kita" dan "Musim Berlalu".

Pada tahun 2000, beliau telah dinobatkan sebagai Artis Baru Terbaik dalam Anugerah Industri Muzik (AIM) tahun 1999. Walau bagaimanapunm perselisihan faham dengan syarikat Warner Music membuatkan beliau keluar dari syarikat itu lalu telah dilamar oleh syarikat Synchsound Music Sdn. Bhd. Beliau menghasilkan album bersama syarikat berkenaan dengan lagu-lagu popular antaranya "Permata", "Mungkin", "Keabadian Cinta", "Sesucinya Cintamu".




Beliau turut cuba menonjolkan diri dalam bidang lakonan apabila muncul dalam filem "Bintang Hati" bersama dengan pelakon dan penyanyi sensasi Amy Mastura. Dengan cubaan demi cubaan, Anuar Zain akhirnya melangkah dengan lebih berani lagi ke dalam industri seni tanah air hingga menjulang namanya apabila dinobatkan dengan pelbagai anugerah. Kini, Anuar Zain masih diminati dan dikenali ramai.





Anugerah/Kejayaan Seni


Anugerah ERA 2005
Vokal Lelaki Pilihan

Anugerah Planet Muzik 2005
Penyanyi Lelaki Paling Popular

Anugerah HYPE 2004
Penyanyi Lelaki Ter-HYPE!



Anugerah Media Hiburan 03/04
Penyanyi Lelaki Popular
Artis Lelaki Kacak


Anugerah Bintang Popular 2004
Penyanyi Lelaki Popular

Anugerah Planet Muzik 2004
Penyanyi Lelaki Paling Popular

Anugerah ERA 2003
Vokal Lelaki Pilihan

Anugerah Personaliti Hiburan 2002
Penyanyai Lelaki Solo/Berkumpulan

Anugerah Industri Muzik 1999
Penyanyi Baru Lelaki Terbaik
Penyanyi Lelaki Terbaik

Specific Images of Kazakhstan Music ( English Post )

The preservation and promotion of traditional music is a highly visible part of Kazakhstan's effort to build a modern nation rooted in a sense of history and national identity. State-sponsored folk ensembles, concerts, festivals and anthologies of recorded music all provide residents of Kazakhstan with a strong sense of cultural heritage as the country rapidly becomes an industrialized, worldwide exporter of oil and natural gas.

Since ancient times, the sparsely inhabited steppe and grasslands that comprise present-day Kazakhstan have been inhabited by pastoral nomads, and Kazakh music has been largely shaped by the exigencies of nomadic life. Foremost among these is unrelenting sensory immersion in the landscape and soundscape of the natural world. Traditional nomadic spirituality ascribes spiritual power to a range of natural phenomena and living creatures, and nomadic music and sound-making often serve as a means of representing and accessing the power of spirits.

Like other historically nomadic peoples in Inner Asia, Kazakhs developed the art of solo vocal and instrumental music to a high level. Narrative pieces called kui ("frame of mind," "mood") tell stories or represent specific images, feelings or qualities of human character through melody and rhythm alone. Kuis are most commonly performed on the dombra, a long-necked fretted lute with two strings that has become the national instrument of Kazakhstan. Other instruments used for the performance of kui are the qyl-qobys, an archaic bowl fiddle with two horsehair strings that was formerly played by shamans, and the Jew's harp (shang qobyz).

Kazakh vocal arts are represented by two kinds of performers. One is the poet-improviser (aqyn), who composes lyrical, often philosophical texts and sets them to music. In the past, aqyns frequently took part in music and poetry contests (aitys) that were an important part of traditional Kazakh social life, and are presently undergoing a revival. The second kind of performer is the storyteller-epic reciter (jyrau). Epic traditions are very much alive in central and western Kazakhstan and include a variety of genres ranging from heroic tales known throughout the Turkic-speaking world ("Kör-ogly," "Alpamysh," "Yedige") to local tales, lyric epics and narrative songs.

With its large Russian population and cosmopolitan major city (Almaty), Kazakhstan has become a center of fusion music that combines traditional instrumental and vocal genres with pop, jazz, and rock. One of the best-known fusion groups is Roksonake, which features a driving, amplified Jew's harp supported by electric guitars and drums. Beginning in the early 1990s, Almaty's "Voices of Asia" festival has offered a showcase for young musicians striving to develop global connections while remaining rooted in an authentic tradition.

Behind The Spritual Power of Gamelan ( English Post )

Gamelan

In the Indonesian archipelago, gamelan ensembles are found on the islands of Java, Bali, Lombok and Kalimantan. Generally speaking, the word "gamelan" refers to many different kinds of Indonesian musical groups, which often feature hanging and pot gongs, metallophones of various sizes, flutes, drums and other instruments. All gamelan music is shaped by a basic melody (in Java, balungan; in Bali, pokok) that is fixed within a repeating gong cycle and decorated by elaborating parts that blossom out of that basic melody.

There are some notable similarities between gamelan ensembles across the west, central and east regions of Java and throughout Bali, including instrument types and construction, performance contexts, musical techniques and theoretical and conceptual approaches to music-making. Gamelan instruments are constructed using natural materials such as wood, bamboo, iron, bronze and animal hide and horn. Gamelan makers are specialized, highly skilled and revered craftsmen who fashion and tune the instruments they produce. Working with metal so closely is believed to be spiritually charged, carrying both possible risks and potential benefits that must be taken seriously.

Gamelan instruments are considered to be imbued with great spiritual power. Stepping over the instruments and touching them with one's feet are forbidden; such actions are considered disrespectful to the instruments and potentially unsafe for the offending individual or other ensemble members. Offerings of various kinds, including incense and flowers, are often made before a gamelan piece is played and on certain auspicious days. There are a number of ancient gamelan groups in Bali and Java, most of which are ceremonial ensembles kept in courts and temples. These archaic gamelan, such as Bali's gamelan salonding and Central Java's gamelan sekati, are usually played only for specific ritual occasions, and some are believed to have tremendous, sometimes dangerous, sacred power.

Traditionally, gamelan ensembles are used in religious contexts, often as accompaniment to rituals, customary practices, ceremonies and dancing. In relatively recent times, gamelan music has begun to accompany secular events, including tourist and concert performances, government functions and educational demonstrations. Many performers maintain, however, that they uphold the sacred associations of the music on a personal level, even when performing in such secular contexts. It is typical for a gamelan musician to be a competent performer on all of the instruments in the ensemble and he will usually select a playing position in a given performance circumstance based on his experience, status, age and abilities relative to the other musicians in attendance.

There is no standard, fixed tuning in gamelan music. Instruments in a single ensemble are tuned as a unique set, making it impossible to simply take one instrument from a given gamelan and exchange it with the same-sized instrument from another set. This does not, however, mean that the gamelan tunings are unregulated or uncontrolled—there exists an exceptionally complex system of tuning and mode (or, more accurately, "mood"), the understanding of which develops over a musician's lifetime.

Given the many consistencies described above, it is remarkable that the various kinds of gamelan, both across regions and within a single area, differ greatly from each other. Each type of gamelan is distinctive, its music unique.
In contemporary Central Java, for example, a complete gamelan usually contains two full sets of instruments, one tuned in the five-tone slendro system and one in the seven-tone pelog. The two sets that make up this gamelan seprangkat are placed together on the floor, with all of the instruments of one tuning facing forward, and those of the other tuning placed perpendicular to the front-facing set. Musicians can quickly turn their bodies then to easily transition from one tuning system to the other. Full gamelan of this kind can be found at large institutions in Indonesia and internationally as well as in villages, in the homes of revered musicians and in the royal courts of Central Java.

On the other hand, a complete Balinese gamelan comprises one set of instruments, but these instruments are paired in their tuning: two instruments of the same size and construction are tuned in a complementary female (slightly lower-pitched pengumbang) and male (slightly higher-pitched pengisep) relationship. The unison pitches on the two instruments are not identical frequencies and when they are played together the result is an acoustical beating called ombak (literally, "waves"). This produces the characteristic shimmering sonority of Balinese gamelan.

A complex technique of interlocking rhythms, called kotekan, is also a defining feature of Balinese gamelan music: two players play precise, differing parts that interlock to create a single, extremely fast melody.
Gamelan ensemble types in Bali are many, and vary greatly in size, instrument composition, repertoire, age and function. Balinese gamelan of all kinds can be found in temples, village community centers, schools and institutes, hotels and private homes. Similarly, there is a great diversity of gamelan types in East and West Java, Lombok and in the relatively unknown and certainly under-researched traditions of gamelan in Kalimantan.

Professional recordings of gamelan music are widely available in the international market, and many colleges, universities and other educational institutions around the world own gamelan ensembles and present public performances. Opportunities to experience live gamelan music are plentiful in Indonesia and beyond the archipelago.

Deep Regional Roots Of Tradisional Chinese Music ( English Post)

Tradisional Chinese Music
There is a saying that 99 percent of all Chinese are farmers, and it's true that most Chinese music – excluding the classical, operatic and art music traditions – originates with rural, peasant traditions, and has deep regional roots.

For centuries, farmers in the north have practiced wind-and-percussion ensembles. Ding County of Hebei is famous for artistry in the double reeds: the guanzi (double-reed pipe), the haidi (small oboe) and the suona (Northern oboe). In Xian, the Western Capital of China, musicians for centuries practiced the sheng (a free-reed mouth organ) and di (reeded transverse flute) for joining ensembles called Xian drum music. In the early 1960s, Liu Mingyuan and the Xinying Traditional Orchestra wrote the popular "Years of Happiness" based on rural traditional music.

Eastern China is "fiddle" country, and bowed instruments such as the erhu, zhonghu, and the gaohu are popular as both solo and ensemble instruments. The Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong provinces have produced a lot of fiddlers, including Wang Dianyu, Zhao Yuchai and the influential A Bing (1893–1950), a street musician famous for his many compositions, including his most famous "Listen to the Pine."

In the south, folk music is often combined with dance. The huadeng is a large class of regional dance. Huadeng is known in the West as the "lantern dance" and translates literally as "flower lantern" -- but has many other names: "jumping the lantern," "playing with the lantern" and lantern theater. The dance is popular in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and their surrounding areas (all in southern or southwestern China). The steps vary from place to place, but the dancers all carry lanterns or fans and they also sing. Huadeng Xi is the lower Lantern Opera. "Yunnan Huadeng" of Yunnan Province, for example, has a very strong instrumental component.

Many Huadeng artists are also highly accomplished instrumental players. The yueqin master Li Yongnian of the Yunnan Huadeng Theater Company (Yunnan Huadeng Jutuan) in Kunming was one such well-known figure. Yueqin is the general name for the moon lute, which is round. Li Yongnian's yueqin is the type used in Yunnan Flower Lantern music, has an octagonal resonator, and is more resonant in musical acoustics.
In the 20th Century, music lovers flocked to folkloric zheng (horizontal harp) artistry.

There is Zhao Yuchai from the Northeastern school and the Yunnan school, Cao Dongfu from the Henan school, and Su Qiaozheng from the Southern school. The period 1955-1966 is what historians and musicologists call the Golden Era of Chinese music recording, and some of the most passionate performances in the history of China were recorded. The most successful recordings of that era were made by the Shanghai Traditional Orchestra (He Wu-qi and Ma Shenglong), the Xinying Traditional Orchestra (in connection with the music of Liu Mingyuan), the Qianwei Traditional Orchestra, and the China Broadcasting Traditional Orchestra.

The Labadi Boy of Percussionist ( English Post )

Nyanyo Addo is a young master percussionist from Ghana, combining the old traditions with new rhythms and songs.

Nyanyo Addo

It was in the small Ga community of Labadi in Ghana, West Africa, that Nyanyo Addo was born into a family where music and dance was naturally integrated into daily life. Traditionally the drum plays an important role in the healing ceremonies of the Ga - people: The calling of the drum is the main reason why people fall into trance.


Raised by his grandfather, a well respected won or priest, Addo learned to play the drum at an early age. In Ghanaian culture the won is involved with his people in a very direct fashion: He is not only a spiritual and religious leader, but often acts as a doctor, lawyer and community leader, prescribing herbal medicines and settling land disputes. This involves great responsibility, which was given to Nyanyo Addo by his grandfather.


But drumming is also part of the daily life in Ghana, messages were transmitted over long distances with the help of big drums and they still accompany weddings and funerals. Festivals are unimaginable without drumming and dancing. The art of drumming and drum-making has been developed to a high level.
The position of the drummer corresponds to the importance and variety of drums: The drummer is a well respected person who knows about history and culture. He gives inspiration to the people as well as to chiefs and kings.

From early childhood, Addo learned to play the traditional drums of the Ga people — for example the big standing drum oblente, but also the atumpani, the gome-drum and the small talking drum odono (with one arm the pressure is varied to change the pitch of the drum, while the other hand uses a stick to beat it.)
The slightly bigger blekete is a bass drum with one membrane at each side. The ballafon, a West African type of xylophone, is another instrument which Addo has learned to play with great skill.

Accompanying Fela Kuti, Mutabaruka and Mustapha Tettey Addy on their tours throughout West Africa, Addo has become an accomplished drummer.
— Courtesy Calabash Music

Andalusian Magic..( English Post )

Andalusian Music is the traditional urban music of the Maghreb – spanning Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.

In 711, a Berber general named Tariq bin Ziyad crossed the narrow strait that divides northern Morocco from southern Spain, named it Gibraltar, and established the first Muslim claim on European land. Over the next eight centuries, a succession of Arab, Berber and other Muslim leaders would control portions of what is now Southern Spain. The lands that Moors controlled included northern cities like Toledo, but the core Muslim areas were Cordoba, Seville and Granada. This area became known as Al-Andalus. The remarkable cultural blendings and innovations, especially in architecture, music, poetry and literature, that developed in Al-Andalus until 1492 when the last Moors were expelled from Granada, resonates in present day traditions in many parts of the world. Al-Andalus is often celebrated as a time and place of tolerance when Muslims, Jews, and Christians thrived together. But periods of war and sieges from the 8th century on caused many Andalusians - among them poets, musicians, Sufi mystics, political figures and Sepharadi Jews - to flee the violence in Europe and to carry Andalusian culture to North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Musiqa Andalusia is the general term for the traditional urban music of the Maghreb - spanning Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, and also of Syria - where communities preserved and developed Andalusian music since medieval times. This music was imported to North Africa and Syria by Muslims and Jews, who were fleeing persecution and the Christian re-conquest of Spain between the 10th and the 15th centuries, after centuries of Arab Muslim control. Early in the 10th century, the first wave of refugees came from Sevilla and concentrated in Tunisia. Waves of migration that followed came from other areas of Spain and concentrated in Algeria and Morocco. The difference in patterns of migrations resulted in differences between contemporary traditions, and in the development of five distinct national traditions. Each tradition has its own repertory, and the variations between them include differences in modal and rhythmic patterns, large-scale structures, instruments and terminology. Andalusian music is known as a'la (instrumental music) in Morocco, san'a (work of art) in Algiers, Gharnati (from Granada) in Western Algeria, ma'luf (customary, standard) in Tunisia and Lybia. Despite the regional and national differences, Andalusian music is united by some formal characteristics, norms of performance practice, a historical identity and philosophical heritage which as a whole, distinguishes the tradition from the music of the Arab East, known as mashreq.

Origins of distinctive Arab-Andalusian music tradition date back to the early 9th century, when the musician, singer and composer Ziryab (Blackbird), a freed Persian slave, was ousted from the court of Baghdad. Ziryab ended up in the court of Al-Andalus in Cordoba, Spain. There he founded a music school in which he developed a new compositional system based in a system of 24 melodic modes, whose cosmological properties were represented in a symbolic tree of temperaments. Each of the modes was associated with a specific hour of the day, natural elements, colors in the spectrum, and aspects of human emotional and physical conditions. Many of those associations are still respected by Andalusian musicians, even if they are not followed in detail in their musical practice. Ziryab also defined the rules for sequencing different song types, putting in place the template for the large-scale form of Andalusian art music in North Africa - the nouba - a cycle of vocal and instrumental music, the performance of which can last many hours. The nouba consists of one or two instrumental introductions and then a series of different vocal movements that move from the slowest and stately to movements that are faster and have shorter rhythmic cycles, at the end of which the feel is driving and danceable. While there used to be 24 noubas, each linked to a different hour of the day, the way in which certain noubas exist in each of the present-day national traditions defines some of the differences between each tradition.



Across the Andalusian diaspora, Andalusian music was cultivated in the palaces of the aristocracy but was especially embraced by Sufi brotherhoods and performed in both religious contexts as well as in coffee houses and in communal celebrations. Andalusian traditions are monodic and based on a subtle system of melodic modes called maqamat, all of which include intervals that are beyond the scope of the diatonic scale, and with rhythmic structures and range from free to metric cycles with distinct patterns of accentuation. The poetic texts, most of which belong to a literary classical Arabic verse form called muwashasha and some to the vernacular zajal were recorded in special collections, but until recently melodic content relied on oral transmission. Love, nature's beauty and the effect of wine are typical topics. Typical instrumentation of Andalusian music includes the oud (lute) rabab (one or 2 stringed fiddle) darbukka (goblet drum), def or tarija (tambourine) qanun (zither), nay (flute) and kamenjah (violin). In recent lineups, other instruments have been added to the ensemble, including piano, contrabass, cello, and sometimes mandolins and even saxophones or clarinets.

While the earliest Andalusian community established itself in Tunisia, Morocco retained the most long-standing ties with the actual territory of Al-Andalus, and in some Northern Moroccan cities whole communities identify themselves as Andalusian. In both Morocco and Tunisia, French colonial authorities saw value in preserving Andalusian music, and after independence, the music was officially sanctioned by the state. This resulted in sponsorship of Andalusian classical music by the state and the media, which helped to keep the music alive, but deterred innovation and experimentation. In Algeria, the reverse was true. French administrators tried to crush Andalusian music traditions and the religious conservatives in Algeria today oppose the poetic celebrations of wine and carnal love. This has given the music a kind of underground appeal that attracts young musicians to the tradition. In Syria the music lives in cities such as Damascus and Aleppo, though the tradition has been greatly influenced by Persian and Ottoman music. But from Libya to Syria, what has kept Andalusian music alive is its use in religious contexts, especially the Sufi lodges.

In Syria, the most famous singers of Andalusian music are Sabri Moudallal, who began his career as a muezzin, and the hugely popular singer Sabah Fakri; singer Abed Azrie experiments with Arabo-Andalusian crossovers with flamenco. Morocco has a tremendously active scene of Andalusian music, with prominent local orchestras such as the Orchestra of Fez and the Orchestra of Tangier; traditional singer Amina Alaoui has also received fame in the West. Tunisia has a variety of ensembles, ranging from that of the Rashidya Institute, which has been prominent in the preservation of Andalusian music of the 20th century, to the experimental all women's band Firqat El Azifat - which mixes a traditional Andalusian lineup with Western strings and piano. Nassima of Algeria is noted for her renditions of the san'a tradition, which in Algeria has been associated with males, while Habib Guerroumi has tackled the Andalu-Algerian repertoire with solo voice and oud accompaniment.-Nili Belkind

A.R Rahman Scores....( English Post ).

Known for his lavish Bollywood film scores, hitmaker A.R. Rahman is a household name in India and it's diaspora.

A.R. Rahman

A.R. Rahman is an Indian composer best known in the West for his collaboration with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber on the 2002 musical Bombay Dreams. But in India and the Indian diaspora, Rahman is a household name thanks to the hundreds of Bollywood film scores and hit songs that he's penned.

Born A.S. Dileep Kumar in 1966 in Madras (now Chennai), the future megastar grew up in a musical household. He began his music instruction early, beginning piano at the age of 4. After his father's death, young Dileep began to support his family as a professional keyboard player at the age of 11; dropping out of school for a life on the road. He would accompany the great tabla master Zakir Hussain on world tours, and eventually convert to Islam, taking the name Allah Rakha Rahman. And, despite Rahman's failure to complete his formal studies, his raw talent won him a scholarship at the Trinity College of Music at Oxford University, where took a degree in music and studied Western Classical forms. He returned to India in 1987 where he began a career in advertising, honing his pop skills by writing jingles.

Rahman opened his own studio in 1989—Panchathan Record Inn—and soon after moved from advertising to scoring the soundtracks to mainly Tamil-language films. His first great success came in 1992, with the film Roja. By 1995 he had moved on to the even bigger Hindi film market, making a big splash with the smash hit Rangeela. He followed this with string of chart-toppers throughout the '90s, including 1998's Dil Se and culminating in his 2001 masterpiece Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India , which was nominated for best foreign-language film at the 2002 Academy Awards.




Rahman's music is as day-glo and technicolor as the Bollywood films he scores; vivid and unafraid to employ synthesizers and big pop sounds. A big fan of '80s pop, Rahman's music often puts a sly, Indian spin on pop cliches—something that served him well in his collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber. In Bombay Dreams, Rahman adapted the melodies of original hits such as "Chaiyya Chayyia" to new, English language lyrics. The lavish musical was a smash hit in it's original 2002 production in London's West End, but later fizzled when transplanted to Broadway.—Tom Pryor