Roopkumar Rathod

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". Roopkumar has two brothers. His eldest brother (b. 1954 and thus nineteen years older than him) is music composer Shravan Rathod (part of the Nadeem-Shravan duo). Another brother is singer Vinod Rathod (b.1962), who is eleven years older than him. Roopkumar is married to Sunali Rathod, formerly the wife of famous bhajan singer Anup Jalota. They have a daughter named Surshree or Reewa.

The fourth son of Dhrupad Maestro Pandit Chaturbhuj Rathod, Roopkumar was initiated into the world of music in his very early years. His journey began as a tabla player and he became sought after by almost all of the ghazal singers in the 1980s. 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 Roopkumar's career. It soared to an unprecedented level of popularity. Roopkumar has sung a number of songs in Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Nepali and Bhojpuri films.

Apart from playback singing for films, Roopkumar'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.

Roopkumar also performs live-on-stage, with artists like Trilok Gurtu, Ranjit Barot and Abhijeet Pohankar in fusion concerts. He has collaborated with Trilok Gurtu for a fusion based album, 'Beat of Love', released in December 2001 and a jazz based album, 'Broken Rhythms', released in October 2004.

In August 2005, the comedy serial Sarabhai vs. Sarabhai featured Roopkumar and Sunali Rathod in one of their episodes that showcased a friendly musical contest.

Roopkumar, along with wife Sunali, won the title of 'Ustaad Jodi' on 'Mission Ustaad', a musical television reality show aired in February 2008, that aimed to create awareness about social causes.

He recently released a sufi album along with Sunali Rathod called Kalmaa.[1]

• Roopkumar Rathod on IMDb
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• Roopkumar Rathod on YouTube