Tulunad’s Composer

Mangalore : Manikanth Kadri, whose first steps in the field of music were guided by his father Padma Shree Kadri Gopalnath, the internationally acclaimed saxophone player, is now famous in his own rights as a composer of film music.
Born in Mangalore on May 28, 1978, Manikanth studied in St. Lawrence Higher Secondary School in Bondel, passed PUC in St. Aloysius College, and obtained a degree in Gokarnanatheshwara College.
He has composed over 500 jingles for radio and television and has worked on 10 devotional albums. The music he composed for his first Malayalam telefilm “Annum Mazhayayirunnu” won the Kerala State Television Award 2005 for the best music. The same telefilm, which was shown on Amrita TV, won six more awards.
Manikanth, who currently resides in Chennai, learned saxophone and clarinet, but later was attracted toward jazz and fusion music. He also did the background music for an English feature film called “Tantric Journal” for 3-D Max Media, a company which is based in Florida. This film was shown in more than 8 international festivals, including those at Hawaii and San Francisco.
His second movie was the Malayalam art movie “Chandranilekkoru Vazhi.” Manikanth has also worked on Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, and Kannada movies. Recently, he composed music for the Tulu movie “Devu Poonje” starring Pooja Gandhi and based on the history of Tulunad. He has composed music for more than 25 films, his most recent compositions being for the Kannada films “Malebillu” and “Swayamvara.”