OfRo
Rohith was born in Chennai, India, and grew up there. He started playing piano at the age of 7 and began learning on electronic instruments soon after. He began taking music seriously in 2005 with his band Nerverek. After he graduated from Loyola College, he moved to Byron Bay, Australia, to further hone his music production skills. He graduated from SAE Institute in 2013. After spending some time in Melbourne, he moved back to Chennai to begin his music career as a music programmer for Harris Jayaraj.
Career
In 2014, he began his career working for Harris Jayaraj as an additional programmer for the movie Yennai Arindhaal.
In 2017, he began his independent music career with his first music video, October Maadham, which featured Instagram model Sameea Bangera, Directed by Ken Royson.
In 2019, he wrote and produced the critically acclaimed, Therukural, a tamil hiphop album with tamil rapper Arivu featuring Tenma and Roshan Jamrock. The album touched topics of caste and class divide in India. The album was highly acclaimed, featured in Rolling Stone India as the top ten Indian albums in 2019 and 5 most politically conscious hiphop in India. Arivu and ofRo performed their first song, Anti Indian at Madras Medai in 2018. He founded Therukural with Arivu, as community for artists and creatives. They would gather with hundreds of young artists, songwriters, beatboxers and more, at public parks to share ideas, songs and more. ofRo’s slick production is apparent in songs like Kalla Mouni and Anti Indian.
He met ADK, a Sri lankan rapper in Harris Jayaraj’s studio in 2015, but it wasn’t until 4 years later when they would work together on a song called Lityananda – a satirical piece commenting on self proclaimed godmen.
Along with co-founder and music director, Tenma, he curates Madras Medai, a premier South Indian independent music festival with the aim to build an ecosystem for future independent artists. Madras Medai was first conducted at CSI Bains School on 19 May 2018. It featured performances by artists like Dopeadelicz, Dharavi United, Sunshine Orchestra, Siennor, Othasevuru, Jatayu, Arivu x ofRo, The Casteless Collective, Chinna Ponnu and Paul Jacob.
Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
