Deva, the Tamil composer who took gaana mainstream, has died at 75

Deva, the Tamil film composer who carried the street sound of Chennai into the biggest hits of 1990s cinema, died on Saturday, 17 October 2026. He was 75.

He was taken to a private hospital in Chennai earlier in the day and died despite treatment. He is survived by his son Srikanth Deva, who is also a film composer, and his brother Murali. Funeral arrangements had not been announced when we published.

The sound he made mainstream

Deva, born Devanesan Chokkalingam in Chennai in 1950, began scoring films with Manasukketha Maharasa in 1989. Over the next three decades he composed for more than 400 films in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.

His signature was gaana, the Chennai working-class song form of fast, witty, drum-driven street music. Before Deva, it lived mostly in neighbourhoods, festivals and funeral processions. He put it in the middle of mainstream film soundtracks and made it sing-along pop.

The late Tamil Nadu leader M. Karunanidhi gave him the title "Thenisai Thendral", roughly "the breeze of honeyed music".

The Rajinikanth years

For many listeners, Deva means Rajinikanth. He scored three of the star's biggest films: Annaamalai (1992), Baashha (1995) and Arunachalam (1997). The Baashha theme, with its stuttering, swaggering build, is still one of the most recognisable pieces of background music in Indian cinema, and "Naan Autokaaran" is still played wherever Tamil films are celebrated.

Tributes

M. K. Stalin, president of the DMK, called Deva humble and kind-hearted, said he made gaana a fixture of mainstream cinema, and said the history of Tamil popular music cannot be written without him. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay called the death an irreparable loss to the Tamil film industry and pointed to the way Deva's gaana songs spoke to ordinary people across four languages. Actors Khushbu Sundar and Vijay Sethupathi were among those who posted condolences.

For a reader new to the scene: Tamil film music is one of the biggest popular music traditions in the world, and Deva was one of the composers who defined its commercial sound between the late 1980s and the 2000s. A. R. Rahman and Ilaiyaraaja are the names more often cited abroad. Deva's songs are the ones people sing in autos, buses and weddings.

We will update this story when the funeral details are announced.