Thaman S.

For SS Thaman, it wasn’t simply a case of following in his father’s footsteps—it was more learning from them before forging his own incredibly successful career as a Telugu and Tamil film music composer. Ghantasala Sai Srinivas Thaman Sivakumar was born in November 1983 into a Telugu Brahmin family of musicians in Chennai. His grandfather was a veteran film director and his father a drummer who played on songs for hundreds of movies in his day. Thaman committed himself to the drums, too, and in 1994—at just 11 years old—he backed his dad on the background score for the film Bhairava Dweepam. In a cruel twist of fate, his father died when Thaman was 13, so the teenager threw himself into not only percussion but also playback singing and other instruments under the expert tutelage of celebrated film composer Mani Sharma, with whom he’s collaborated on almost 100 films. All the while, the artist was honing his compositional skills and 2009’s Malli Malli marked his debut in the Telugu film world, followed by his Tamil debut later in the year on Sindhanai Sei. Since then, whether as playback singer, composer or even band member, Thaman’s work has continued apace. He has frequently collaborated as music director with film-makers like Surender Reddy, Sreenu Vaitla and Boyapati Srinu. And he has also branched out into the world of reality TV as a judge on music show Telugu Indian Idol.