Hariharan (born 3 April 1955) is an Indian playback and ghazal singer, whose songs have been featured mainly in Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Bhojpuri and Telugu films. 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 cinema and Bollywood cinema.
Hariharan was born in Thiruvananthapuram the capital city of Kerala State and brought up in Bombay now known as Mumbai. He has bachelor's degrees in science and law. He is fluent in English, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam and Tamil. He did his collegiate studies from S.I.E.S. College.
The son of renowned Carnatic vocalists, Shrimati Alamelu and the late H.A.S. Mani (full name:Anantha Subramani ), he inherited his parents' musical talents. Alamelu was Hariharan's first guru (mentor).From her, he picked up Carnatic music skills. He was also exposed to Hindustani music from a young age.
In his teens, inspired by the songs of Mehdi Hassan, Hariharan developed a passion for ghazals and started training in Hindustani music from Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan. He used to put in thirteen hours of singing practice every day.
