Yuvan Shankar Raja on Muzigle

Yuvan Shankar Raja is one of the most prominent Indian film composers today and he's also a singer and occasional lyricist. He is born on 31st August 1979 in Chennai, India into a musically affluent Tamil family; Yuvan Shankar Raja is the third and youngest child of musician and film composer Ilayaraja. Yuvan Shankar Raja did his schooling at St. Bede's school from Chennai before studying at Loyola College. He began learning music from ‘Jacob Master’, attending piano classes at "Musee Musical" in Chennai. He takes huge inspiration from the work of his father and other composers such as ‘SD Burman’, ‘RD Burman’, ‘MS Viswanathan’ and ‘Naushad’ and the voices of singers ‘Lata Mangeshkar’, ‘Asha Bhosle’, ‘PB Sreenivas’ and ‘P Susheela’. In year 1996 following his mother's suggestion to take up music as a profession, Yuvan started composing tunes for a private album and got a break with T Siva, the producer of the film ‘Aravindhan’.

Yuvan has scored music for many Tamil, Telugu and Kannada films. His career kick-started at the age of 16 in 1997, when he composed the film scores for ‘Aravindhan’. He subsequently composed film scores for a variety of South Indian films, which include blockbusters such as ‘Dheena’, ‘Manmadhan’, ‘Paruthiveeran’, ‘Billa’ and ‘Aadavari Matalaku Ardhalu Verule’ as well as acclaimed films such as ‘Kaadhal Kondein’, ‘7G Rainbow Colony’, ‘Pudhupetti’, ‘Chennai 600028’ and ‘Kattradhu Thamizh’. Within half a dozen years, Yuvan had established himself as a leading composer. In a career spanning less than a decade, He had established himself as one of the leading and most-sought after music directors in the Tamil film industry. Yuvan Shankar Raja's collaborations with several film directors such as Selva Raghavan, Ameer Sultan, Vishnu Vardhan, Venkat Prabhu and Lingu Swamy have always resulted in highly successful soundtracks. Likewise he has often worked together with noted Indian poet ‘Vaali’ and young Tamil lyricists including ‘NA Muthukumar’, ‘PA Vijay’ and ‘Snehan’ to come up with much-loved compositions. Besides scoring film music and soundtracks, he also produces personal music albums from time to time. In his very early years, in 1999, he worked on the Tamil pop album The Blast that contained 12 tracks, featuring vocals by ‘Kamal Haasan’, ‘Unni Krishnan’ and ‘Nithyashree Mahadevan’.

Spanning 13 years of his career, Yuvan has scored for over 75 films. Considered a highly versatile composer, his music is noted for its innovation and style. He became the youngest Music Director to win Film Fare Award in 2004 at the age of 25, for his score in the ‘7G Rainbow Colony’ in the same year he also won Tamil Nadu ‘State Film Award’ in 2006 and the ‘Cyprus International Film Festival Award’ in 2006 for ‘Raam’, becoming the first and only Indian composer to win it. Also received Filfare for his Best Music Direction for the film ‘7 G Rainbow Colony’, ‘Film Fare Special Jury Award’ for ‘Oy’, ‘Ananda Vikatan Award’ for his Best Music Direction in the year 2007 and won many awards and also got nominated for many films.

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