Biodata

Kattassery Joseph Yesudas (born 10 January 1940) is an Indian playback singer and musician who sing Indian classical, devotional and film songs. He is widely considered one of the greatest singers in the history of Indian music and a cultural icon of Kerala. Yesudas is estimated to have recorded more than 50,000 songs in various Indian languages, including Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Tulu, Hindi, Odia, Bengali, Marathi as well as Arabic, English, Latin, and Russian, in a career spanning six decades. He is often referred to as Gaanagandharvan (transl. The Celestial Singer). Yesudas holds the record for singing 11 songs in different languages in a single day. He has also composed a number of Malayalam film songs during the 1970s and 1980s. Yesudas won the National Award for the Best Male Playback Singer record eight times, the Film fare five times, and the State Award for the Best Playback Singer forty-three times, including awards given by the state governments of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and West Bengal. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1975, the Padma Bhushan in 2002, and the Padma Vibhushan (second-highest civilian award) in 2017 by the Government of India for his contributions towards the arts. In 2005, he was honored with the J. C. Daniel Award, Kerala government's highest honor for contributions to Malayalam cinema. In 2011 Yesudas was honored with the CNN-IBN outstanding achievement award for his contributions in the music field. In 2006, he sang 16 film songs in four South Indian languages on the same day at AVM Studio, Chennai. K. J. Yesudas was born in Kochi, in Kerala, in a Latin Catholic Christian family to Augustine Joseph and Elizabeth Joseph. His father was a well-known Malayalam classical musician and stage actor. Yesudas was the second of seven children, preceded by an elder sister named Pushpa, and followed by four younger brothers - Antony (Antappan), Babu, Mani, Justin and a younger sister, Jayamma. Among these siblings, Pushpa and Babu died of fever at a young age, and Justin, the youngest brother, died under mysterious circumstances in February 2020, aged 62. Augustine Joseph's dearest friend, Musician Kunjan Velu Bhagavathar was the first guru of him. Kunjan Velu was the disciple of Nadaswara Chakravarthi T. N. Rajarathnam Pillai. Yesudas started his academic music training at R. L. V. Music Academy, Thrippunithura and completed the Ganabooshanam course. Later he studied at Swathi Thirunal College of Music, Thiruvananthapuram under the tutelage of the carnatic music maestro K. R. Kumaraswamy Iyer and Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer but could not complete his studies due to financial constraints. For a brief period, he also studied music under Vechoor Harihara Subramania Iyer, after which he took advanced training from Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar. K. J. Yesudas married Prabha Yesudas on 1 February 1970 who hailed from a strict Malankara Orthodox Christian family in Mallapally. In 2021, Yesudas completed 60 years as a playback singer.