Clinton Cerejo is amongst the cherished playback singers of Hindi film industry who is known for some very popular musical renditions of Bollywood films. Apart from playback singing he is also involved in music programming, background scores, musical arrangements, vocal arrangements and production. His singing has a unique appeal and enthusiasm for which he has bagged the opportunity of working with leading music composers and collaborations of Bollywood.
Early Life of Clinton Cerejo
Clinton Cerejo was born in Mumbai to an academically inclined family devoid of any musical background. His mother is a French professor while his father was an engineer at L&T. His elder brother is software professional and his younger sister works for a medical journal in the U.S. as an editor. He graduated in commerce stream from Poddar College in Mumbai and was convinced about pursuing a degree in MBA. However his friends persuaded him about his musical talent after which he lost interest in a desk job and followed a career in music industry. Although his family was a little sceptical about his venture, he stood firm with his decision. Since a young age he was quite influenced by renowned music composers like Roy Thomas Baker, Roland Orzabal, Peter Gabriel, Hugh Padgham, Babyface, Stevie Wonder, Arif Mardin, Trevor Horn and Quincy Jones.
Career of Clinton Cerejo
Clinton Cerejo indulged into the world of music since his college days when he used to jam sessions along with his friend Siddharth Haldipur, who is one of the music directors of the famed duo Sangeet-Siddharth. During one of these jam sessions Siddharth`s father Amar Haldipur who is a reputed violinist and arranger spotted Clinton Cerejo and got impressed with his singing. Clinton was then introduced to Anand Modak who is the music composer of Mukta, a Marathi film. Soon after this Clinton recorded his first song in the recording studio which was an English song for the movie featured on an African-American. 
Afterwards a series of periodic recordings followed and then he began singing for advertisement jingles. During this phase he worked with famed music composers such as Ranjit Barot, Louis Banks, Lezz Lewis and Shankar Ehsaan Loy. Clinton also recorded a number of jingles along with the popular playback singer Kunal Ganjawala.
Clinton Cerejo soon realized that his voice was not versatile enough for pursuing a successful career in advertisement jingles and thus he started searching for other avenues of music. He has always been interested, even since his college days, in the texture of a song along with other elements which were involved in its production. This allured him towards arranging or producing songs. He started in this arena with small firms and assignments as well as remix albums, gradually gaining recognition in the same. Once, while working his vocal arrangements for a song was overheard by A.R.Rahman who was working in the adjoining studio. The latter then offered him the opportunity for working with him which rendered further recognition to Clinton`s works followed by the arrival of bigger projects. Clinton Cerejo then started working with some of the most acclaimed music composers and took up various roles in music department. He also composed several songs that were featured in Coke studio. One of such songs was `Madari` which was voiced by Vishal Dadlani and Sonu Kakkar.
Later he ventured in the arena of playback singing. His got his first break as a singer in 1999 with the Tamil film Taj Mahal where he voiced the composition of A. R. Rahman. His debut in Bollywood as a playback singer was marked by the movie One 2 Ka 4 in 2001 in which he sang the title track. This was followed by many other songs in Hindi as well as South Indian film industry. His songs `Yaaram` and `Kaali Kaali` from the 2013 Bollywood flick Ek Thi Daayan went on to gather huge popularity for him. Other Hindi movies for which he did playback singing include Bhoot, Darna Mana Hai, Neal `n` Nikki, Omkara, Yuvvraaj, Karthik Calling Karthik, 7 Khoon Maaf, Pyar Ka Punchnama, Ekk Deewana Tha, Vicky Donor, Blood Money and many others.
