Music- A R Rehman

Why I chose him ahead of so many legendary music directors like R.D Burman, Illayaraja, or singers like Kishore Kumar, Mohd. Rafi and others is primarily because according to me, he has been instrumental in taking the Indian Music to an international level. I have never heard before of any Indian music being directly incorporated into Hollywood movies, and in one case even the language was not changed. This guy has just been revelation to the Indian movie industry. He has found so many new talents and is still continuously on the hunt for more new singers which I guess Illayaraja missed out. I have started to like Rehman's albums now on par with Pink Floyd, and Metallica. I have always thought it is very difficult to come up with songs like Comfortably Numb or Nothing else Matters, but now I feel it is equally challenging to come up with brilliant tunes and to convert them into great hits album after album for over 15 years and that too primarily in two different languages. Although, they say that music has no language bounds but still I feel one must have a proper understanding of the kind of music a particular set of people would like and according to me this differs a whole lot in Hindi and Tamil and this guy leaves me spellbound in both Sivaji and Rang-de-Basanti. Hopefully he will come up with more great music and will venture out into different languages. I still feel numb when I listen to the Bombay tune whether it is in Bombay or it is in Lord of the War.