![]() ![]() “I signed a deal with Universal Music in the UK. “It was a big shift for me,” says Arjun, who also subsequently collaborated with Tamil film music composers Yuvan Shankar Raja and Anirudh Ravichander forĮven as the Indian market welcomed him, the young musician was eager to fulfil that “Western ambition”, for he began his career in London. In 2014, record label T-series signed a deal with him. It spared him tedious marketing, while helping him reach listeners world over. Very soon, Arjun attracted over a million listeners on his YouTube channel, his “game changer”. The encouraging response to his English take on ‘Kolaveri’, released in December 2011 prompted him to try remixes of popular Hindi numbers and Kollywood hits. Shershaah is a classic example of his style. To them, his music represents “home” his recent English remix of ‘Raatan Lambiyaan’ from That is perhaps what spoke to the scores of South Asian youth growing up in the West. He was able to produce his own music, bringing a distinct, east-west sensibility to the tune and lyrics. In a few years, Arjun found he had imbibed these different sounds, organically. “I was around Punjabis, Bengalis, and Pakistanis, attending their parties, weddings, where I was exposed to a lot of their music. Later, growing up amidst South Asian diaspora, he experienced a generous dose of Bollywood and other regional music. I learnt to play the guitar and it felt like ‘this is my thing!’.” “When I was young, it was mostly Western music that I was into R‘nB and pop, mainly. Arjun’s mother Tara de Fonseka’s interest in jazz and Western music drew him to music in his early years. His father Indrajit Coomaraswamy is a renowned Sri Lankan economist and a former Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. “That was the start of a kind of formula…taking a song from an Eastern context and putting my Western spin on it,” says the singer, who was in Colombo recently, to catch up with, among other friends, cricketing star Dimuth Karunaratne.īorn in Colombo, Arjun was raised in London where his parents moved when he was a toddler. “I feel old,” laughs Arjun, now 31, while acknowledging it was “life changing”. The video, with Arjun singing in what looks like a casual, home-recording setting, has got over 17 million views since. When British Sri Lankan singer and songwriter Arjun Coomaraswamy (who goes by the name Arjun) recorded his R & B remix of ‘Why this kolaveri di’ a decade ago, little did the young, Cambridge-educated architect know that it would go viral and forge a new career path. ![]()
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