Connecting across borders: Singer Arjun Coomarasamy on his musical collaborations
The Hindu
British Sri Lankan singer Arjun Coomarasamy on teaming up with the who’s who of Tamil film music
When British Sri Lankan singer and songwriter Arjun Coomaraswamy 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.
The video, with Arjun singing in what looks like a casual, home-recording setting, has got over 17 million views since. “I feel old,” laughs Arjun, now 31, while acknowledging it was “life changing”. “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.
Born in Colombo, Arjun was raised in London where his parents moved when he was a toddler. His father Indrajit Coomaraswamy is a renowned Sri Lankan economist and a former Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Arjun’s mother Tara de Fonseka’s interest in jazz and Western music drew him to music in his early years. “When I was young, it was mostly Western music that I was into; R‘nB and pop, mainly. I learnt to play the guitar and it felt like ‘this is my thing!’.”