A.R. Rahman wins two Oscars in one night and thanks God in Tamil
On 22 February 2009 the composer from Chennai walked to the Kodak Theatre stage twice, for the score and for the song Jai Ho. "Ella pugazhum iraivanukke," he said. All praise to God.
Footage: A.R. Rahman Winning Original Score | 81st Oscars (2009), published by Oscars on YouTube
- 2, Score and Song
- Oscars that night
- 8
- Slumdog Millionaire's total
- Zac Efron and Alicia Keys
- Presented by
- 2
- Grammys the next year
By 2009 A.R. Rahman had been the dominant composer of Indian cinema for seventeen years, since Roja in 1992, with more than a hundred film scores and a fanbase across South Asia and the diaspora that Hollywood barely registered. Slumdog Millionaire changed that. Danny Boyle's film about a Mumbai boy on a quiz show was scored by Rahman in a matter of weeks, and the closing number, Jai Ho, danced on a railway platform, became the film's signature.
At the 81st Academy Awards Slumdog won eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Rahman took two of them, for Original Score and, with the lyricist Gulzar, for Original Song. Zac Efron and Alicia Keys handed him the first. In his acceptance he switched to Tamil for a line his mother would understand, and then said the sentence that has followed him since: "All my life I had a choice of hate and love. I chose love, and I'm here."
He was the first Indian to win two Oscars in a single night. Jai Ho went to number one in India and into the charts across Europe, and Rahman added two Grammys the following year. For a music industry that had produced Lata Mangeshkar, Ravi Shankar and fifty years of film songs without a single Academy Award, the night was a late arrival, and a loud one.
Who was there
Where
Sources
- A. R. Rahman · Wikipedia
- 81st Academy Awards · Wikipedia
- Slumdog Millionaire · Wikipedia
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