Clinton Cerejo is an

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

singer Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

music composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and

musician A musician is a person who composes, conducts, or performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general term used to designate one who follows music as a profession. Musicians include songwriters who wri ...

Life

Clinton Cerejo was born into an academically inclined family with no known musical background. His father was an engineer at L&T and mother is a French professor. His elder brother is a software professional and his younger sister is an editor for medical journals in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. He completed his graduation in Commerce from

Poddar College Rāmniranjan Ānandilāl Podār College of Commerce and Economics (Autonomous), popularly known as R.A Podar College is affiliated with the University of Mumbai, situated in Matunga, Mumbai, India. It is run by the Shikshan Prasarak Mandali, a ...

in Mumbai and was on his way to pursue a degree in M.B.A before his friends convinced him of his musical talent. During his younger days, he was influenced by great producers such as

Quincy Jones Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, musician, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer. His career spans 70 years in the entertainment industry with a record of 80 Grammy Award n ...

Trevor Horn Trevor Charles Horn (born 15 July 1949) is an English music producer, label and recording studio owner, musician and composer. He is best known for his production work in the 1980s, and for being one half of the new wave band The Buggles (wit ...

Arif Mardin Arif Mardin (March 15, 1932 – June 25, 2006) was a Turkish-American music producer, who worked with hundreds of artists across many different styles of music, including jazz, rock, soul, disco and country. He worked at Atlantic Records for ov ...

Stevie Wonder Stevland Hardaway Morris ( Judkins; May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, who is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include rhythm and blues, Pop musi ...

Babyface Babyface or Baby Face can refer to: Nicknames * Lester Joseph Gillis a.k.a. Baby Face Nelson, an infamous 1930s bank robber * Roosevelt "Baby Face" Willette (1933–1971), an American hard bop and soul-jazz musician * "Baby Face", Jimmy McLarnin ...

Hugh Padgham Hugh Charles Padgham (born 15 February 1955) is an English record producer and audio engineer. He has won four Grammy Awards, for Producer of the Year and Album of the Year for 1985, Record of the Year for 1990, and Engineer of the Year for 1 ...

Peter Gabriel Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and activist. He rose to fame as the original lead singer of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, he launched ...

Roland Orzabal Roland Orzabal (born Roland Jaime Orzabal de la Quintana; 22 August 1961) is a British musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, and author. He is best known as a co-founder of Tears for Fears, of which he is the main songwriter and joint v ...

, and

Roy Thomas Baker Roy Thomas Baker (born 10 November 1946) is an English record producer, songwriter and arranger, who has produced rock and pop and songs since the 1970s. Career Baker began his career at Decca Records at the age of 14 and later worked as an a ...

. Clinton married

Dominique Cerejo Dominique Cerejo is an Indian female playback singer best known for the song "Yeh Tumhari Meri Baatein" from Rock On!!. She has sung in over thirty bollywood soundtrack albums. She is married to Clinton Cerejo, who also works in the Indian mus ...

, who was his college friend and is now an established singer.

Career

During his time at college, he would often have

jam session A jam session is a relatively informal musical event, process, or activity where musicians, typically instrumentalists, play improvised solos and vamp over tunes, drones, songs, and chord progressions. To "jam" is to improvise music without exte ...

s with his friend

Siddharth Haldipur Siddharth Haldipur is an Indian singer and music director. He is a part of the Sangeet-Siddharth music director duo. The duo has given music for prominent Hindi as well as Marathi movies. In their few years of music direction, the duo has comp ...

(of music director duo ''Sangeet-Siddharth'' fame). It was on one such session that

Amar Haldipur Amar Haldipur is a noted music director or composer of Indian music industry. He composed music for number of Bollywood as well as Punjabi movies including Shaheed-E-Mohabbat and Channa Sachi Muchi. His sons Siddharth Haldipur and Sangeet Haldip ...

(Siddharth's father), who is a famous arranger and violinist, noticed Clinton and took a liking to his voice. Amar introduced Clinton to Anand Modak, the music director of a Marathi film ''Mukta'' and soon he was performing his first song in a recording studio. It was an English song for a Marathi film, picturised on an African-American. After a series of sporadic recordings, he started lending his voice to many advertisement jingles. During this period he worked with

Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy () is an Indian musical trio consisting of Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa. They have composed music for over 50 soundtracks across five languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and English. Amongst t ...

, Lezz Lewis,

Ranjit Barot Ranjit Barot (born 1959) is an Indian film score composer, music director, music arranger, drummer and singer based in Mumbai, India. He is a longtime associate of A. R. Rahman. He has been described by guitar legend John McLaughlin as "one of ...

& Louis Banks. Some of his contemporaries at that time were KK and

Kunal Ganjawala Kunal Ganjawala (born 14 April 1972) is an Indian playback singer whose songs are mostly featured in Hindi and Kannada films. He has also sung in Marathi, Bengali and other official languages of India. Kunal began his career by singing jingl ...

, who went on to become playback singers. Clinton and Kunal sang a lot of jingles together. Realizing that his voice was not versatile enough to be a successful jingle singer, he started looking at other areas of interest.

A. R. Rahman Allah Rakha Rahman (; born A. S. Dileep Kumar; 6 January 1967) is an Indian music composer, record producer, singer and songwriter, popular for his works in Indian cinema; predominantly in Tamil and Hindi films, with occasional forays in int ...

, while working in an adjoining studio, happened to overhear one of Clinton's vocal arrangements for a song and when they met a month later, offered Clinton the opportunity to work with him. Soon his work was noticed by many and other projects followed. Eventually Clinton went on to work with many leading Indian music composers performing various roles in the music department. Later on he composed various songs which were featured in Coke studio. One of the famous songs is "Madari", sung by

Vishal Dadlani Vishal Dadlani (born 28 June 1973) is an Indian singer, songwriter and music composer. He is one half of the duo Vishal–Shekhar, Front Man and vocalist of one of India's leading rock bands called Pentagram. As a singer he has sung various h ...

and

Sonu Kakkar Sonu Kakkar is an Indian playback singer, songwriter and television personality. She is the elder sister of Bollywood singers, Neha Kakkar and Tony Kakkar. Sonu Kakkar was born in Rishikesh on October 20, 1979 in Uttarakhand. One of her most po ...

Discography

As composer

Films

Non-film work

As music producer (For other composers)

Singer

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Official Website of Clinton Cerejo
*
In Conversation with Clinton Cerejo – Music Aloud's interview

* ttp://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/jul/13clinton.htm Rediff interview with Clinton Cerejo {{DEFAULTSORT:Cerejo, Clinton Indian male playback singers Indian music arrangers Living people Musicians from Mumbai Bollywood playback singers Indian film score composers Indian male film score composers Year of birth missing (living people)