Harris Jayaraj (born January 8, 1975) is a film composer from Tamil cinema. He has written scores and soundtracks and played music for many Tamil films, as well as Telugu and Hindi films. He lives in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Harris Jayaraj was born into a pious Christian Nadar family in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He studied at the Krishnasamy Matric School, Chennai and later. His father, S.M. Jayakumar, was a film guitarist who later became a noted musician and Chennai film composer. His father was an assistant to Malayalam Music director Shyam and he wished to make his child Harris a great singer.

But Harris' interest was in music and he once confessed that he couldn't sing well and his vocal is also not good. He turned to music and Harris Jayaraj was an early admirer of the work of Hans Zimmer, percussionist Aruljothi Balagopal, A. R. Rahman and M. S. Viswanathan too.

Harris Jayaraj entered the world of film music as a musician, programming scores and drum–percussion for films under the famous Tamil music director A. R. Rahman. Jayaraj began his career as a keyboardist for several music directors over twelve years including Rahman, Shankar Ganesh, Vidyasagar, Yuvan Shankar Raja and Sirpi, in addition to composing beats for TV advertisements.His first music score for a commercial film was for the Tamil film Minnale. The music was well received, particularly the song "Vaseegara", which made the film a box office hit, running the charts for weeks. After Minnale, Harris composed music for the Tamil movies 12B and Majunu which met with high acclaim. His score for Minnale was later dubbed.

Jayaraj is married to Suma. The couple have a son called Samuel Nicholas and a daughter called Karen Nikita. Harris' father Jayakumar is a noted evangelistic musician.