Hariharan,Mumbai-Maharashtra

Hariharan Anantha Subramani (born 3 April 1955) is an Indian playback, bhajan and ghazal singer who predominantly sings in Tamil, Hindi and Telugu languages. He has also sung over 15,000 notable songs in 10 languages including Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Sinhala, Bhojpuri, Odia, Bengali, Sanskrit, Gujarati and English. He is an established ghazal singer and one of the pioneers of Indian fusion music.

In 2004, he was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India and is a two-time National Award winner. Hariharan, associating with Lesle Lewis, formed Colonial Cousins, a two-member band. They have cut many private music albums and also scored music for few feature films in Tamil and Hindi. In 2023, Hariharan and late Gulshan Kumar’s Hanuman Chalisa recorded under the label of T-Series crossed the 3-billion views mark on YouTube, making it the first devotional song in the world to do so.

Personal life and education
Hariharan was born to classical musicians H A S Mani and Alamelu Mani. HAS Mani – he was affectionately called Chellamani – groomed many Carnatic singers in Mumbai where he died in his early 40s due to cardiac arrest in 1963. His mother Alamelu Mani (b 1935) has had a long career as Carnatic vocalist and a distinguished teacher, and was honoured with the title Sangeeta Pracharya in 2019. Hariharan did his schooling at Don Bosco High School, Matunga and graduated from SIES College of Arts, Science & Commerce, Mumbai. Thereafter he pursued his studies at the St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.