page_title: Hariharan (singer)
section_title: Colonial Cousins
hierarchical_section_title: Hariharan (singer) / Career / Colonial Cousins
caption_attribution_description: English: The Colonial Cousins (Hariharan and Leslie Lewis) at the launch of their album Once More
context_page_description: Hariharan is an Indian playback, bhajan and ghazal singer from Mumbai, whose songs have been featured mainly in Tamil and Hindi. Also he sang notable songs in Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi and Bhojpuri 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. He is regarded as one of the greatest Indian singers of all time.
  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.
  On May 28, 2020, Hariharan and Late Gulshan Kumar's Hanuman Chalisa recorded under the label of T-Series crossed 1-billion views mark on YouTube - making it the first devotional song in the world to do so.
context_section_description: The year 1996 was a career milestone; he formed the band Colonial Cousins with Mumbai-based composer and singer Lesle Lewis. Their first album, Colonial Cousins was a fusion album and was the first Indian act to be featured on MTV Unplugged. It won a string of awards including the MTV Indian Viewers' Choice award and Billboard Award for the Best Asian Music Group.
  By this single album, Hariharan established himself as one of the pioneers of Indian fusion music. The next albums by this band were The Way We Do It (1998) and Aatma (2001) but were fairly noticed. Colonial Cousins released their fourth studio album "Once More" on 29 October 2012 under the label Universal. The 2009 Tamil film Modhi Vilayadu had score and soundtrack composed by Colonial Cousins. They also scored the 2010 Tamil film Chikku Bukku.
caption: Hariharan (left) and Leslie Lewis at the launch of "Once More"
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