Is A.R. Rahman the busiest man in music?

A.R. Rahman’s participation in Rock The Tabla got me thinking: is he the busiest man in music?

In addition to Rock The Tabla, we will shortly see the fruits of another Rahman project, which he has been working on for the past few months. SuperHeavy, the supergroup featuring Rahman, Mick Jagger, ‘Eurythmic’ Dave Stewart, Joss Stone and Damian Marley, release their album in September.

We all know A.R. Rahman primarily as a film composer. In Europe and the US most of us know him for his scores for the blockbusters Slumdog Millionaire (for which he won 2 Oscars) and 127 Hours, but he is also astonishingly prolific as a composer for Indian film music. In fact, TIME magazine described him as “the world’s most prominent and prolific film composer”. At his home in Chennai he has a state of the art multi-studio complex, with each studio working constantly on a different film score. In the last 20 years he has composed scores for well over 100 films, comparing favourably against Hollywood’s big guns John Williams, Hans Zimmer and the late John Barry.

Rahman has composed music for TV shows, documentaries and ad jingles. He wrote the music for the theatre production of Lord of the Rings, and in 2010 he composed the official theme tune for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. He also regularly composes music for countless other artists. Earlier this year Rahman contributed to Michael Bolton’s album Gems: The Duets Collection.

All this in between world tours and media interviews. Hossam says that when he was recording with Rahman at his home in Chennai, Rahman was in 12-15 interviews daily for Indian magazines and radio.

There is probably much, much more which I have failed to mention.

Is A.R. Rahman the busiest man in music? It would be hard to imagine anyone busier. As Hossam says, “I don’t think we have really discovered this man’s full dimensions or the extent of his creativity yet”. So what else does he have in store for us?