Song Vijay

[Gaynelle Alnutt]

Vijay is an Indian actor and playback singer who works in Tamil films.[1] The son of singer Shoba Chandrasekhar, Vijay debuted in the lead role in early 1990s, appearing in Naalaiya Theerpu, directed by his father S. A. Chandrasekhar.[2] He has sung for composers including but not limited to, Deva, Ilaiyaraaja, Vidyasagar, Sirpy, Bharani, S. A. Rajkumar, Ramana Gogula, A. R. Rahman, Yuvan Shankar Raja, D. Imman, Devi Sri Prasad, Harris Jayaraj, G. V. Prakash Kumar, Anirudh Ravichander, Santhosh Narayanan and Thaman S.[3][4] He is one of the most prolific singers among Tamil actors.[5]

Vijay made his debut by singing "Bombay City Sukkha Rotti" (1994) in Rasigan. After his 25th song "Vaadi Vaadi" (2005) in Sachein, Vijay took a sabbatical from singing to concentrate on acting,[3] but made a comeback with "Google Google" in Thuppakki (2012). He won the Favorite Song of The Year at the Vijay Awards for his performance of the song.[6] and a SIIMA Award nomination for Best Playback Singer.[7]

In 2016, the pop song "Selfie Pulla" which Vijay had recorded in 2014 became popular in Romania and other European countries.[8] He was nominated for a Filmfare Award South in the Best Playback Singer category for "Selfie Pulla".[9] In 2015 he was again nominated for Best Playback Singer, for his performance of "Yaendi Yaendi".[10]

Vijay Antony was born in Nagercoil, Kanyakumari District.[1] When he entered the media and film industry, he had picked Agni as his stage name, but this was changed to Vijay by director S. A. Chandrasekhar who had commented that Agni was not lucky.

Antony was brought up by his mother after his father committed suicide when Antony was 7. He is not a trained musician, but started his career as a sound engineer and later became a music composer. After completing his tertiary education, he established an audio studio called Audio Infotainment and worked there as a sound engineer. In his early days as a music composer, he composed jingles for advertisements, and notable background scores for television shows by conducting research on sound engineering.[3] His music composing venture in movies arrived when Oscar Ravichandran approached Antony to compose music for his film Dishyum, but his music composer debut in movies happened through Sukran, as it was released first.

Antony's songs for the 2008 film Kadhalil Vizhunthen became hits, especially the dappan koothu number Nakka Mukka. He became the first Indian music director to win a Cannes Golden Lion award, for "Nakka Mukka" (for The Times of India) in the Best of Music category.[4][5] The song was later played at the 2011 Cricket World Cup.

Vijay Antony's acting debut was in the crime thriller Naan where he played the lead role. The film's standalone sequel titled Salim, an action thriller, was his next project as an actor, for which he also composed music.[6] Both the films were sleeper hits.[7]

In 2015, he starred in the romantic comedy India Pakistan, his first acting film for which he was not the music director.[7] In 2016, he chose to star in the action thriller Pichaikkaran (2016), collaborating with his Dishyum director Sasi.[8] It became a commercial success, with overall collections nearing 40 Crore.[9] The Telugu dub Bichagadu was a bigger success than the original.[10] His next was Saithan, an action thriller directed by debutant Pradeep Krishnamoorthy.

He appeared in the 2017 political action thriller Yaman directed by Jeeva Shankar, whom he collaborated with for the second time after Naan. The film released to positive reviews. His next film Annadurai in the same year was an action drama which received mixed reviews.[11] In 2018, he starred in Kaali, a period action film directed by Kiruthiga Udhayanidhi[12] and Thimiru Pudichavan, an action film directed by Ganeshaa.

Antony is married to Fatima Vijay Antony, and they had two daughters, Meera and Lara. Meera committed suicide on 19 September 2023 at the age of 16 in their home in Chennai.[15][16] For his films produced by Vijay Antony Film Corporation, Fatima was credited as the producer except for Romeo (2024), for which Meera was credited as the producer.[17][18]

Antony has a well-known great-grandfather, Samuel Vedanayagam Pillai, who was a Tamil poet, novelist, and social worker and is remembered for his authorship of Prathapa Mudaliar Charithram, recognized as the "first modern Tamil novel." Vedanayagam's ideals of women's liberation and education are reflected in this novel.

Geetha Govindam is a 2018 film directed by Parasuram Petla. It stars Vijay and Rashmika Mandanna in the lead roles. The film and its songs were a massive success. Vijay teamed up with Parasuram again for The Family Star but the film failed to make a mark and repeat the success of Geetha Govindam.

Vijay and Rashmika recently also celebrated their 2019 film Dear Comrade, which raked in 400 million views on YouTube. Vijay will soon be seen in a film directed by Gowtam Tinnanuri, while Rashmika will star in Pushpa 2, Sikandar, Kubera, Rainbow, The Girlfriend and Chhava.

It was his way of beginning the opening keynote address for an unprecedented joint conference of the American String Teachers Association and the Suzuki Association of the Americas, taking place through Sunday in Louisville, Kentucky, with some 3,500 educators, exhibitors, performers, and supporters participating.

Gupta is a Los Angeles-based violinist. Following a rigorous conservatory training, Gupta won a position in the Los Angeles Philharmonic as its youngest-ever member. He went on to co-found Street Symphony - which brings music to homeless and incarcerated communities. After winning a MacArthur fellowship he chose to leave the LA Phil to devote all his time to Street Symphony.

Gupta started playing violin at the age of four, and "my first years on violin were spent playing two pieces," Gupta said, inviting us to sing along if we knew them. He played "Go Tell Aunt Rhody," and everyone sang along.

"You can hear the similarities between the songs," he said. Though the audience might not know this one - this was the song that made a connection for his family. His parents had immigrated to the U.S. from India, and they constantly listened to cassette tapes of the folk songs.

As a child, Gupta would bring his violin to family and community functions and play his Suzuki songs, "but none of my aunties and uncles responded to those songs." But at a certain point, even when he was as young as four years old, "I knew I could translate that music from the cassettes that my parents played into music that could make them weep."

Gupta studied in New York City with Louise Behrend at the pre-college program at the Juilliard School, and as he said, "her lessons were cutting." For example, when his parents commissioned a violin for him from India, she made the withering comment, "chubby boy with a fat fiddle." But at the same time, she danced and sang "and it engaged me."

Gupta loved music. When he was 13 and his parents told him that he was to become a medical doctor, "part of me was shattered." Nonetheless, he tried. "I fell in love with the stories of doctors," he said. In particular, his work with a doctor who was researching the effects of music on the brain had a lasting impact. The doctor was working with stroke patients, and he discovered that while the patients could not form sentences and speak them, the patients could form the words if they were accompanied by song. In other words, they could sing them. The doctor was able to teach them hours of songs, and that helped them regain their language.

At the same time, Gupta could not shake the fact that all he really wanted to be doing was playing Brahms' Fourth Symphony. That very research doctor gave him some pivotal advice: "Vijay, you have to do what makes you leap out of bed in the morning," he said, and furthermore, "the violin will not wait for you."

That was when Gupta went back to the violin, and he got into the Los Angeles Philharmonic. But while he was playing at Walt Disney Concert Hall, he was nagged by the knowledge that it was so close to Skid Row, and that some 80,000 people were homeless, sleeping on the streets of Los Angeles.

This feeling grew stronger when in 2008 he met Nathaniel Ayers, a Juilliard-trained double bassist who had fallen into homelessness. Ayers gained notariety as the subject of numerous columns in the LA Times and then in a 2009 film called "The Soloist." Ayers wanted a violin lesson, and Gupta was called upon to teach him.

"At first I thought I would have nothing in common with him," but they actually had much in common because "both our hearts were spun from music," Gupta said. The more they worked together the more they found that commonality, whether they were meeting on Skid Row or at Disney Hall. "The music had created a space more sacred than the space where we performed."

Of course, it took a while for those on Skid Row to accept the idea that music could do anything for them, with the people facing so much trauma and need. But Gupta persisted, and the connection grew deep. While playing a Beethoven quartet, a woman suddenly held up her hand, and kept it in the air for the remainder of the performance. Afterwards she said, "How did you know that this music was my story?" and then she related a very traumatic story indeed. Later, a social worker told Gupta that she'd never heard this woman speak.

On another occasion, Gupta was playing the Bach Chacconne for a group of prison inmates, and he actually felt like it was going pretty well. But when he finished, there was silence. Crickets. No applause. Finally a man in the middle of the room stood and said, "Son, don't you know how to play any songs we know?"

The song "Nakka Mukka", a kuthu (folk) song and "Thozhiya", a melodious romantic song, were very successful hits composed were one of the main reasons for the film's success. All songs in this movie was composed by Vijay Antony except "Unakena Naan". It was composed by this movie Director PV Prasath himself. "Nakka Mukka" was played in the opening ceremony of the Cricket World Cup 2011 held at Mirpur, Bangladesh. It also featured among a medley of Tamil songs performed by Shah Rukh Khan and Shriya Saran in the inaugural of the fourth edition of the Indian Premier League 2011 held in Chennai, India.

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