Roop Kumar Rathod

Roop Kumar Rathod
Roop Kumar Rathod in 2014
Background information
Genres	Playback singer, Ghazal
Website	www.roopsunali.com

Roop Kumar Rathod is an Indian playback singer and music director.

Roopkumar is the son of the late Pandit Chaturbhuj Rathod, the classical luminary – an exponent of the rare and arguably the oldest style of singing i.e. Dhrupad. He belonged to the "Aditya Gharana of Jamnagar". Pandit Rathod has trained and groomed many well known names like Kalyanji – Anandji, Manhar Udhas and many more. He is famous throughout Bollywood as an excellent playback singer and music director having also performed extensively with Anup Jalota as a percussionist. Roopkumar has two brothers, music composer Shravan Rathod (part of the Nadeem-Shravan duo) and singer Vinod Rathod. He is married to Sunali Rathod who was bhajan singer Anup Jalota's first wife, before she fell in love with Roopkumar who was Anup's tabalchi (tabla player). They have a daughter named Surshree or Reewa who is a singer herself.

The fourth son to the Dhrupad Maestro, Pandit Chaturbhuj Rathod, Roop Kumar, was initiated into the world of music in his very early years. His journey began as a tabla player and he went on to become one of the most sought after tablists by almost all the ghazal singers in the 80s. His tryst with playback singing began in the year 1989 with the song, 'Main Tera Aashiq Hoon', composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal for the movie 'Gumraah.’

The song "Sandese Aate Hai", from the movie 'Border', became one of the major breakthroughs of Roop Kumar's career. It soared to an unprecedented level of popularity, becoming an anthem of sorts for the nation. Roop Kumar has sung a number of songs in Gujrati, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Nepali and Bhojpuri films.

Apart from playback singing for films, Roop Kumar's other thrust of interest is live concerts. With his wife Sunali Rathod, he travels all over the world and performs at a number of concerts including in countries like US, UK, Dubai, East Africa, Singapore, etc. with their renditions of various genres of music spanning ghazal, sufi, light classical and film songs.