Golden Globe icing on A.R. Rahman's career

By Shilpa Jamkhandikar

MUMBAI (Reuters) - A.R. Rahman, who won a Golden Globe award on Sunday for best musical score with "Slumdog Millionaire", is one of India's most famous Bollywood composers and has sold nearly as many albums as Madonna.

His scores for a host of Indian language movies have fused global influences from hip-hop and rap to Broadway musicals and Indian folk music in a way that critics believe could help Bollywood music become more global.

Rahman, 43, wrote the music for the rags-to-riches romance of a Mumbai slum boy. The film also bagged three more Golden Globe honours for best drama, best director and best screenwriter.

It is the first time an Indian has won a Golden Globe for composing in a country whose rich classical traditions have inspired oeuvres of global music. Yet, Indian film music is mostly popular only with lovers of Bollywood.

"This means so much for Indian music," said Gulzar, acclaimed filmmaker and Bollywood lyricist, who wrote one of the "Slumdog" songs.

"Not just classical (Indian) music, for which you can credit Pandit Ravi Shankar and all the other musicians, but when it comes to cinema and its music, Rahman has really brought it to the global stage."

Known as the "Mozart of Madras", the reticent composer was born A.S. Dileep Kumar, a Hindu, before his family converted to Sufi Islam and gave him the name Allah Rakha Rahman.

He studied music at Oxford and wrote advertisement jingles before getting a break in 1992 for the film "Roja". The film paved the way for a career that has seen him sell around 200 million albums.