Kattassery Joseph Yesudas
(born 10 January 1940) is an Indian classical musician and playback singer.
Yesudas sings Indian classical, devotional, and popular music.
He has recorded more than 50,000 songs in many languages including Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit,Tulu, Malay,
Russian, Arabic, Latin and English during a career spanning five
decades. He has performed in most Indian languages except Assamese, Konkani and Kashmiri.
He also composed a number of Malayalam film songs in the 1970s and 1980s.
Yesudas is fondly called Gana Gandharvan (The Celestial Singer).
Yesudas has won the National Award for the Best Male Playback Singer seven times (the most by any Indian singer)
and the State Award for the Best Playback Singer 43 times, which consists of
awards by the state governments of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka, and West Bengal. He was awarded Padma
Shri in 1975 and Padma
Bhushan in 2002 by the Government
of India for his contributions
to the arts. In 2011 Yesudas was honoured with theCNN-IBN outstanding achievement award having recorded
over 50,000 songs in a five-decade career
In 2006, he sang 16 film songs in four South
Indian languages on the same
day at AVM Studio, Chennai.
Early life and
background[edit]
K. J. Yesudas was born at Fort
Kochi, in the erstwhile Kingdom
of Cochin, into a Roman Catholic Latin
Rite family to late Augustine
Joseph and late Alicekutty.
His father, who was a well-known Malayalam classical musician and stage actor, was his
first guru. Later he joined the R.L.V. Music Academy at Thrippunithura and underwent training. Later he studied at
Sree Swati Thirunal music college, Thiruvananthapuram under the late Semmangudy
Sreenivasa Iyer. But he could not complete his studies due to financial
constraints. For a brief period, he was with Sri Vechur Harihara Subramania
Iyer, after which he took advanced training from Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar. In 2011 he completed
his 50 Years as a Play Back Singer.
·
Completed the Ganabooshanam course at R.L.V. Music Academy, Thripunithura, Cochin
·
Graduated from the
Sree Swathithirunal Music Academy, Trivandrum
·
Trained under K. R.
Kumaraswamy (former principal of the Music College, Kochi), Thripunithura Shri
K.C Kalyanasundaram Master, Kunjuvelan Aasan (a disciple of Nadaswara Vidwan
Rajaratnam Pillai), Augustine Joseph (his father), V.
Dakshinamoorthy, Ramankutti Bagavathar, Sivaraman Nayar, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer andChembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar.
Playback singing
career[edit]
Debut and Early
career: In 1960's[edit]
.jpg)
Yesudas with poet and lyricist O.
N. V. Kurup
The first song sung by Yesudas is Jaathi Bhedam Matha Dwesham (music: M
B Sreenivasan) on 14 Nov 1961, which he usually sings on all the
special occasions in front of the audience. Yesudas began his career in playback
singing in the Malayalam movie Kaalpadukal and Tamil, Telugu and Kannada movies in the
early 1960s.
He got the first break in his music career with the hit
Malayalam film namedBharya ( music by G.
Devarajan and lyrics by Vayalar
Ramavarma). He sang inTamil for Bommai first (music: S.
Balachander), but the first released movie was Konjum Kumari (music: Veda).
The trio of Salil, Yesudas and Prem
Nazir (the evergreen hero of
Malayalam Cinema) took the Malayalam Cinema Industry of the 70's by storm. It
was generally agreed that Yesudas's voice was the most suited one for Prem
Nazir.
In 1970 he was nominated to head the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy and was the youngest person ever to occupy the
post.
On 9 Dec 1971, Yesudas missed a flight which later crashed on
the way to Madurai. A Hawker Siddeley HS 748 near Chinnamanur was descending
into Madurai in reduced visibility. It flew into high terrain about 50 mi
(80 km) from the airport, killing the four crew members and 17 passengers.
Bollywood entry: 1970s[edit]
By the 1970s Yesudas entered Bollywood.
The first Hindi song he sang was for the movie Jai Jawan Jai Kissan (1971), but the first released movie was Chhoti Si Baat. He has sung Hindi songs for many leading
actors in Hindi cinema including Amitabh
Bachchan, Amol
Palekar and Jeetendra.
He has sung many evergreen Hindi film songs for music directors including Ravindra
Jain, Bappi
Lahiri, Khayyam, Rajkamal
and Salil
Chowdhury.
Yesudas's most popular Hindi songs are in the 1976 movie Chitchor, with music given by Ravindra
Jain. The greatest tribute to Yesudas was paid by Ravindra
Jain, in an interview wherein the blind music director confessed
that if ever he happened to regain vision, the first person he would like to
see would be Yesudas.
Prominence over the
world[edit]
Yesudas has performed in many major cities around the world. In
1965, he was invited by the Soviet Union government to perform at music
concerts in various cities in the USSR and also sang a Russian song over Radio
Kazakhstan. Yesudas became one of the senate members in the International Parliament for Safety and Peace.
On 14 November 1999, Yesudas was presented with an honorary award by UNESCO for "Outstanding Achievements in Music
and Peace" at the "Music for Peace" event in Paris.a concert
held to mark the dawn of the new millennium and whose attendees included
artistes such as Lionel
Richie, Ray
Charles, Montserrat
Caballé, and Zubin
Mehta.
In 1971, during the Indo-Pakistani
War, Yesudas travelled all around Kerala with his musical troupe to
raise funds for the Indian prime minister's National Defense Fund.
In 2001 he sang for album Ahimsa in Sanskrit, Latin and English and in a mix of styles including New
Age and Carnatic. In his
music concerts in the Middle East he sings Arabic songs in the Carnatic style. He frequently serves as a cultural
ambassador for India through his performances abroad, promoting Indian music.
In 2009 Yesudas began a cross-country musical campaign against
terrorism in Thiruvananthapuram, with the motto 'Music For Peace'. Kavita
Karkare, wife of Hemant
Karkare, handed over the torch to Yesudas to mark the launch of the
'Shanthi Sangeetha Yatra'.
Yesudas is married to Prabha. They have three sons, Vinod, Vijay
and Vishal. Their second son Vijay
Yesudas is a musician who won
the Kerala State Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer in 2007 and 2013. The family is currently
settled in Chennai and Trivandrum.
He also owns estates in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA and Flower
Mound, TX, USA for personal and business reasons.
Role models[edit]
Sree
Narayana Guru’s great message, One religion and One God for all
humanity", influenced young Yesudas in his dealings with his fellow men.
He had his own heroes among the musicians too. Mohammed
Rafi, Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar and Balamurali Krishna are the ones he admires the most.
Spiritualism[edit]
For the past 30 years Yesudas has been visiting Kollur
Mookambika temple, Kollur, Karnataka on
his birthday to sing keerthans of Saraswati
devi, the Goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. The music
festival started on his 60th birthday. The nine-day music festival begins every
January at Kollur Mookambika Temple. On Sunday, 10 January 2010, he celebrated
his 70th birthday (Sapthathi) at Kollur Sri Mookambika Temple with
'Sangeetharchana' (classical devotional songs), along with 70 singers before
goddess Mookambika. The Sangeetharchana included "Pancharatna Gayana"
of Thyagaraja's poems. He also took part in the Vidyarambha function. All
India Radio broadcast the special
Sangeetharchana all over Kerala. Yesudas also has many songs devoted to Lord
Ayyappa including the hit song "Harivarasanam".
In 1980 Yesudas established the Tharangani
Studio at Trivandrum. In 1992
the office and studio were moved toChennai, Tamil Nadu
and the company was incorporated in the US in 1998. Tharangni Studio and
Tharangni Records became a recording center in Kerala which, for the first
time, brought out audio cassettes of Malayalam
film songs in stereo. The
record company also had a voice mixing studio in Studio27, Chennai. The studio
continues to produce and present events of Yesudas both for film and Indian classical music concerts throughout the world.
Notable facts[edit]
·
Yesudas has the rare
feat of performing the classical concert for 36 times in the 36-year old
prestigious Soorya Music festival organised by Soorya Krishnamoorthy. This is one among his concerts
which is highly followed by serious musical lovers and often rated as the most
popular among his concerts in India.
·
After winning the
Kerala State Award for Best Playback singer on numerous occasions, he asked
that he be ruled out of contention so as to give his peers and newcomers a
chance of winning the award. Despite his request, he was still given this award
several times in the following years.
·
Playback singer Unni
Menon, who was singing track songs for other prominent singers, got
a break when Yesudas, after hearing the track songs Unni Menon had sung for the
Malayalam film Kadathu, asked the music director Shyamto
record and release the songs as they were. Yesudas was of the opinion that the
songs did not need to be rendered by him as Unni Menon had already done it well
and there was no need for improvement.
·
Harivarasanam,
a devotional song musical version composed by G.
Devarajan, recited before closing the temple atSabarimala was sung by Yesudas. Though there have been
many different renditions of this song by many different renowned singers, Sabarimala officially uses Yesudas' voice for Harivarasanam every day.
·
Swaralaya
Yesudas award is a prestigious award
for music artists in recognition of their outstanding performance. The award is
instituted jointly by Swaralaya, an organisation that promotes music and Kairali
Channel, based inTrivandrum,
Kerala. Awards have been given annually since 2000. Yesudas presents the awards
at a Gandharva Sandhya every January.
Yesudas has recorded over 50,000 songs and has won scores of
accolades including the coveted Padma
Shri (1975),Padma
Bhushan (2002) and seven
National Awards for Best Playback Singer. He is the only singer who has been
accorded the title Asthana Gayakan (official singer) of Kerala State.
·
National Film Award for Best
Male Playback Singer a record seven times
by the Government of India
·
Kerala State Film Awards a record 26 times for the best playback singer
by the Government of Kerala
·
Karnataka State Film Awards three times for the best playback singer by
the Government of Karnataka
·
Tamil Nadu State Film Awards five times for the best playback singer by the
Government of Tamil
Nadu
·
Andhra Pradesh State Film Awards four times for the best playback singer by the
Government of Andhra
Pradesh
·
West Bengal State Film
Awards one time for the best playback singer by the Government of West
Bengal
·
Sangeetha Kalasikhamani, 2002 by The Indian Fine arts
Society, Chennai
K J Yesudas Signature
As Actor[edit]
Year
|
Film
|
Stars
|
Director
|
Role
|
1965
|
||||
1965
|
as himself
|
|||
1966
|
as merchant
|
|||
1973
|
Achaani
|
as singer
|
||
1977
|
as singer
|
|||
2002
|
as himself
|
|||
2005
|
as himself
|
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