Mumbai-born Hariharan is one of the pioneers of Indian fusion music. The son of Carnatic vocalists, Alamelu and the late H A S Mani, Hariharan’s musical talent was inherited. His first guru was his mother. He later developed a passion for ghazals and started training in Hindustani music from Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan.
In 1977, Hariharan won the all-India Sur Singaar competition and was signed on by the late music director Jaidev to sing for the Hindi film Gaman. His ghazal, Ajeeb saane he mujh par qarar, in that movie won him an Uttar Pradesh state award. In his early years, Hariharan sang for TV serials. He also released several successful ghazal albums, for which he penned the lyrics himself. One of them was Gulfam, which hit double platinum in sales and fetched him the Diva Award for Best Album of the Year in 1994.
Hariharan entered the Tamil filmdom in 1993 with the patriotic song Thamizha thamizha in Maniratnam’s Roja. He was adjudged Best Male Playback Singer in the Tamil Nadu State Government Film Awards for 1995 for his soulful rendition of Uyire uyire in the movie Bombay. Subsequently, Hariharan's voice has graced recent Tamil films.
The year 1996, when he released the fusion album Colonial Cousins with Bombay-based composer/singer Leslie Lewis, was a career milestone. This was the first Indian act to be featured on MTV Unplugged. It won a string of awards, including the MTV Indian Viewers' Choice award. The songs in this album bring out Hariharan’s versatility and ease in handling Carnatic music as well as ghazals.
Despite being an admirer of Kishore Kumar, Mohd Rafi and S P Balasubramaniam, Hariharan has developed a distinctive style of his own.
