Deva (composer)

Devanesan Chokkalingam, also known as Deva, is an Indian movie composer and singer. He has composed songs and provided background music for Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada movies in a career spanning about 36 years. Many know his gaana songs, written mostly with the help of Madras Tamil. He is known as the "Father of the Gaana Genre" in the Tamil movie industry.^[1][2]

Devanesan Chokkalingam, Photo source by Musico India

Deva has composed music for many movies during the course of his life. His first movie as a music director was Manasukkeththa Maharasa in 1989. Since then, he has composed music for more than 400 movies.^[3]

Personal life

Deva was born to M. C. Chokkalingam and M. C. Krishnaveni on November 20th, 1950. Even in his childhood, Deva was attracted to the world of music. Teaming up with lyricist Chandrabose, he performed many musical programmes on stage. As he was growing up, he started learning classical music under Dhanraj. Later he completed a course in Western music at the Trinity College of Music in London.

His son Srikanth Deva is also a music director. Deva's brothers are also music directors, forming the duo Sabesh-Murali. His nephew Jai is an actor.

Career

Before coming to Tamil cinema, Deva worked in the television field. In those days Deva's brothers were working in the musical group of Ilaiyaraja, and similar to the case of other music directors, as musicians playing instruments. His first movie, Maattukkara Mannaru, was released in 1986. He was then called to work on the movie Vaigasi Poranthachu. After the release of Vaigasi Poranthachu, his name became known throughout the Tamil community.^[4]

So far he has composed music for more than 400 movies, which include Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam movies. He is also famous for his compositions for religious movies. He was widely renowned for his music for Rajinikanth acted Basha movie. In 2014, Anirudh Ravichander chose Deva to sing a gaana song in his album Maan Karate and labelled Deva as the "father of the Gaana genre".^[5]

Honours

Veteran music director M. S. Viswanathan awarded the title Thenisai Thendral upon Deva, for his contributions to Tamil cinema.