Deva, the composer who took Chennai’s gaana to mainstream cinema, is no more

Music director Deva. File | Photo Credit: R. Ashok

Tamil film music composer Deva, who brought gaana music into mainstream cinema and whose songs and background scores for Rajinikanth-starrers such as Annamalai, Arunachalam, and Baashha became hugely popular, died on Saturday (October 17, 2026) aged 75. Hospital sources said he had no pulse when he arrived and efforts to revive him remained futile.

Deva’s music bridged seemingly disparate worlds — the earthy rhythms of Chennai’s gaana tradition, the mass appeal of Tamil cinema, and the melodic richness of classical and devotional music.

Gaana in Deva’s music

“Every music composer has a style of his own and is associated with a genre of music. I hail from Chennai, and gaana is inseparable from Chennaiites. I used to say ‘gaana song’, and only later did I come to know that ‘gaana’ means song in Hindi. It has a different taste and a very peculiar sound. It may sound raw, but the musicality of this genre is very deep,” the composer, popularly known as Thenisai Thendral Deva, had told The Hindu in an interview.

Born Devanesan Chokkalingam, Deva worked in the Public Works Department (PWD) of the Tamil Nadu government before entering the film industry. His debut as a film music composer was with Mattukkara Mannaru in 1986. Though the film failed at the box office, its songs later gained popularity.