- published: 30 Nov 2015
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Jayaraj Rajasekharan Nair, often credited as Jayaraj, is an award-winning Indian Malayali filmmaker who has marked his presence in mainstream as well as art house films. He is known for his films like Vidyarambham (1990), Johnnie Walker (1992), Paithrukam (1993), Kaliyattam (1997), Shantham (2000), 4 the People (2004), Gulmohar (2008) and Loudspeaker (2009).
Jayaraj was born on 31 May 1960 to a middle class family in Kottayam, Kerala, India. He completed his Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Communication. During his stay at Thiruvananthapuram, he got the chance to attend various film festivals including the International Film Festival of Kerala and watch many world classics.Kurosawa's Rashomon and DeSica's Bicycle Thieves were some of such film and they influenced him immensesly. After his studies in Thiruvananthapuram, he met noted director Bharathan who was a neighbor of his sister in Madras, Tamilnadu. Bharathan was impressed by Jayaraj and made him his assistant director for Chilambu(1986). Jayaraj then went on to be the assistant to Bharathan in 6 more films including the critically acclaimed Oru Minnaminunginte Nurunguvettam(1987) and Vaishali(1988). Jayaraj debuted as director with Vidyarambham(1988). His early career mainly produced commercially oriented films like Aakasha Kottayile Sultan (1991), Johnnie Walker (1992), High Way (1995), Thumboli Kadappuram (1995) and Arabia (1995).
Harris Jayaraj (Tamil: ஹாரிஸ் ஜெயராஜ்; born 8 January 1975) is an Indian film composer. He has written scores and soundtracks for Tamil, Telugu and Hindi films.
Harris Jayaraj hails from a pious Christian Nadar family from Tirunelveli and was born and brought up in Chennai. Harris studied at Krishnaswamy Matric School, K.K.Nagar. His father, S. M. Jayakumar, was a noted film guitarist and an assistant to Malayalam music director Shyam and later became a noted musician and film composer. At the age of six Harris began his formal training in carnatic music. His father wanted him to become a guitarist and made him learn classical guitar. Harris scored the highest mark in Asia on his 4th grade exam of Trinity College of Music, London. He has the privilege of being the first Indian to be the highest scorer in Asia.
He started his music career as a guitarist in 1987 at the age of twelve. After befitting as an ample guitar player, he started playing keyboard and developed interest over synthesizers. He then started programming with his Roland MC-500 and went on to work as a programmer and musician under more than twenty five music directors in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Bengali and Oriya, working in more than 600 projects till the year 2000. He worked under noted composers including Raj-Koti, A. R. Rahman, Mani Sharma, Karthik Raja, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Vidyasagar. While working as an additional programmer under Rahman, he composed music for various television commercials including the famous Coca-Cola commercial featuring actor Vijay. In his early years, he admired music composers M. S. Viswanathan, percussionist Aruljothi Balagopal, A. R. Rahman and Hans Zimmer