He's currently one of India's most popular playback singers, lending his rich, deep voice to both Hindi and Tamil film tunes. But 47-year-old Hariharan switches singing styles just as easily as his clothes.
Clad in a kurta-pyjama (long tunic and pants), he fills up a concert hall with the mellifluous strains of both North and South Indian classical music. Looking sharp in leather pants and vivid colour shirts, he rocks, belting out pop tunes.
On Saturday Hariharan will perform at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga, minus the leather pants.
"It's a ghazal concert," he elaborates during an interview on the phone from New Orleans. "I might sing a few film songs, but the concert is aimed at a niche audience."
Ghazal, a form of poetry Hariharan describes as "talking to your beloved," is his forte.
Born and brought up in Mumbai (Bombay), Hariharan comes from a family of musicians. Both his parents were trained in classical South Indian style known as Carnatic music. However, his parents encouraged Hariharan to listen to classical North Indian music known as Hindustani music.
"You could say I've heard music since I was born," he says. "My parents taught students in our house. We'd have musical evenings and discussions of music. And we would go out for music concerts.
"And when I was in school, I was exposed to English songs, such as those by ABBA or the Beatles."
Yet something about Hindustani music appealed to Hariharan and he started learning it from renowned singer Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan.
Soon after, in about 1977, Hariharan started to enter the world of ghazals.
"I started singing ghazals because I felt it had poetry, romance and rhythm," he says. "And you could put any kind of singing into it. I've used Hindustani and Carnatic ragas (a melodic framework on which the singer improvises) in ghazals."
As he was starting his foray into ghazals, Hariharan also started his playback-singing career. Winning an award in a national contest in 1977, his voice caught the ear of Indian music director
Jaidev who gave Hariharan his first break in the Hindi movie Gaman. In 1998 Hariharan was nominated for the National Award for his debut movie song.
Movie offers poured in. At the same time he was also recording ghazal albums such as Reflections, Paigam and Haazir. But it wasn't until much later in his musical career that Hariharan started getting recognized as a singer.
"I had to develop a style," he says. "And my ghazal albums gave me a kind of character, a personality."
In 1992 Hariharan met A. R. Rahman, a Tamil composer who was then also struggling to make it in the industry. (Now a much-in-demand composer, Rahman recently paired up with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber to write the score for the musical Bombay Dreams currently showing in Britain.)
Rahman, who had heard Hariharan's ghazals, signed him on to sing for the Tamil film Roja. The song became a hit. The same year saw Hariharan pairing up with composer Leslie Lewis to form the band Colonial Cousins. They put out a self-titled album in 1996, which won an MTV India's Viewer's Choice award as well as a U.S. Billboard award. Colonial Cousins also became the first Indian act to perform on MTV Unplugged in London, England.
"It was like another mehfil or cutcheri (concert)," laughs Hariharan when asked about their performance on MTV Unplugged.
In 1998, Hariharan also won the National Award for his rendition of a song in the Hindi movie Border - 20 years after he was first nominated. As for the future, Hariharan has a simple plan.
"I just want to make good music. That's all," he says.