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Categorically Hariharan
 The man of many masks steps into a crowded room. There is a chorus of murmurs. "Look, it's Hariharan, the ghazal singer!", "Hariharan, the cine playback singer!", "Hariharan, the 'Krishnani' guy!", "Hariharan, the world musician!". For a genre-builder, Hariharan does not seem too keen on categories. "I don't want to be identified with any one style," he says. "I just want people to know me as…Hariharan."
To date, the Mumbai-based crooner has featured in 21 albums, whose musical flavours run the whole gamut of taste. From the rasapoddi of Tamil film songs to the garam masala of ghazals to the curry fish-n-chips of his English-Indian fusion band Colonial Cousins, Hariharan has poured his voice into every imaginable stylistic brew. His latest ghazal album, "Khaash", is what he calls "Urdu blues". "Really, our lives are fusion, so cross-cultural music is perfectly natural." His personal musical heritage is nothing if not kaleidoscopic. The collage of his Ober-style emerged on a canvas flung with Carnatic music at home, Catholic choral music at Don Bosco School and years of international travel and collaboration.
With a wry wave of his hand, he dismisses the notion that such influences alone have made him a unique entity in a field rampant with uni-dimensional one-hit-wonders, selling a single style component to a focused market niche. "Any metro kid has that cross cultural background."
 His job, he feels, is to channel that background into something that reaches the composite and near-proverbial "masses". "After all, pop music is popular music," he repeats the tired cliché with a flourish.
Though his latest project is another Colonial Cousins album, scheduled for release this December, he has distinct plans to enter the burgeoning Tamil Pop scene soon. "Tamil pop already has an international niche with South Indians living in Malaysia, Singapore, the States and the UK. I was in London last year and did a show before 9,000 South Indians for four hours. You'd never find that kind of fan support here in India." He thinks that the transition from Tamil film music to Tamil pop music should be a relatively painless one, for artistes and fans alike. "The film industry has appropriated from the advert industry and the pop industry long enough. If pop fans want story lines, they'll find plenty around videos. Pop music is a genre of its own that deserves solid recognition," he says, his voice swelling with activist zeal.
Then he laughs. "Do you like pop music? Of course you do, all modern music is pop music," he answers his question before anyone tries to argue.
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