Harris Jayaraj worked under music composers including Raj-Koti, A.R. Rahman, Mani Sharma, Karthik Raja, Vidyasagar as keyboard player for more than 600 films till 2000. He made his debut with Tamil film, Minnale starring Madhavan and Abbas. The film album was a chartbuster and won him a Filmfare award for being the best Music director. He broke AR Rehman’s record of bagging the Filmfare for nine consecutive times. The film was dubbed in to Telugu as Cheli and it was equally hit here too. Thus Telugu audience first tasted of Cheli’s music with a dubbed film. In 2002, his career received major boost with the stupendous success of films like Lesa Lesa and Saamy.
Victory Venkatesh’s Vaasu in 2002 is the first direct Telugu movie of Harris Jayaraj. The album was a super hit then but the film did not work well. Gharshana, his second direct Telugu movie in the direction of Gautam Menon in 2004 was also a musical hit. However Harris mostly confined to Tamil cinema and is in touch with Telugu audience with the music of dubbed films like Ghajini and Aparichithudu.
Despite getting a star status, Harris Jayaraj like most of his Tamil counterparts gave Kollywood first preference. He rarely scores music for direct Telugu films. He only scored music for significant Telugu direct films like Sainikudu, Munna and Orange till 2010. Unfortunately none of them did well at the box office. However since 2002, Harris’ music enthralled Telugu audience with number of dubbed Telugu movies like Surya S/O Krishnan, Rangam, 7th Sense, Brothers etc.
