Ghantasala Sai Srinivas Thaman Siva Kumar, known popularly as S. Thaman is an Indian film music composer, who predominantly works in Telugu cinema.Despite deputing his film career as an actor in Shankar's Boys, he has since established himself as a prominent music director in the South Indian film industry composing music for many movies every year. He owns a music band named Thakkali. He was born in Andhra Pradesh, India into a Brahmin family . He is the grand child of Ghantasala Balaramayya, erstwhile director and producer, known for producing the Telugu film Seetarama Jananam, the debut film of Akkineni Nageswara Rao. Thaman hails from a family of musicians. His father Ghantasala Siva Kumar was a Drummer, who worked for seven hundred films, under composer, K. Chakravarthy, his mother Ghantasala Savitri is a playback singer, his aunt is singer P. Vasantha. Thaman is married to Play back singer Sri Vardhini. At the age of nine, He joined Ilaiyaraaja's brother, G. Anand as a rhythm pads player, and discontinued studies when he lost his father at the age of 13. He was compelled to make his hobby into a profession to meet the crisis in his family.He then joined Raj-Koti team, and worked for three years on sixty films and then joined M. M. Keeravani and worked with him for three years completing thirty films. He has also gained experience from composers like Vandemataram Srinivas, Chakri, R. P. Patnaik and Devi Sri Prasad. However, the most memorable period in his life is his tutelage under Manisharma with whom he spent six and a half years and worked on eighty films. On the whole he put in fourteen years of rhythm and keyboard programming with the veterans before branching out on his own.Thaman was added to the cast of Boys after a successful audition in which he had to play the drums and went on to help out with the background score of the film. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.