Hariharan 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