INTRODUCTION

Kattassery Joseph Yesudas (കാട്ടശ്ശേരി ജോസഫ് യേശുദാസ്; 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 also composed a number of Malayalam film songs in the 1970s and 1980s.He is fondly called Gana Gandharvan (English: The Celestial Singer).

He 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 more than thirty times by the Governments of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal. In 2002, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India for his contributions towards the arts.

Early life and background

          K. J. Yesudas was born in Fort Kochi, Kingdom of Cochin, into a Catholic family, to Augustine Joseph and 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 in Thrippunithura and underwent training. Later he studied in Sree Swati Thirunal music college, Thiruvananthapuram under the training of Late SemmangudySreenivasa ayyer. But he could not complete his studies due to financial constrains. For a brief period, he was with Sri Vechur Hari Hara Subramania Iyer, after which he took advanced training from Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar.In 2011 he completed his 50 Years as a Play Back Singer.

          The first song recorded by Yesudas is Jaathi Bhedam Matha Dwesham (music: M B Sreenivasan) on 14th Nov 1961, which he usually sings in all the special occasions in front of the audience. Yesudas began his career in playback singing in the Malayalam movie Kaalpadukal and Kollywood movies in the early 1960s. He sang in Tamil for Bommai first (music: S. Balachander), but the first released movie was Konjum Kumari (music: Veda). By the 1970s he entered Bollywood. His first Hindi song 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. In 2006, he sang 16 film songs in four South Indian languages on the same day at AVM Studio, Chennai.

          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 on Radio Kazakhstan. 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 1970, he was nominated to head the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy and was the youngest person ever to occupy the post. In 1971, during the Indo-Pakistani War, Yesudas traveled all around Kerala with his musical troupe to raise funds for the Indian Prime Minister's National Defense Fund. He also became Senate member of International Parliament for Safety and Peace.On 14 November 1999, UNESCO presented Yesudas with an honorary award 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 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'.

          He is often preferred by music directors/producers to render the songs which require the power factor and extreme variations in ragas, mainly in the big-budget movies.The song "Aadiyusha Sandhya" from the movie Pazhassi Raja is an example of his voice clarity even at the age of 70. Thiruvarur Bakthavathsalam, a mridangam musician, has accompanied him in many concerts.

Personal life

Yesudas is married to Prabha. They have three sons, Vinod, Vijay and Vishal. The second son Vijay Yesudas is a budding musician who won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer in 2007. 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.

Notable facts

    After winning the Kerala State Award for Best Playback singer on numerous occasions, he asked that he be ruled out of contention so that to give his peers and newcomers a chance of winning. Despite his request, he was still awarded this award multiple 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 Shyam to 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 composed by Sri Kambakkudi Kulathur Srinivasa Iyer, recited before closing the temple at Sabarimala was sung by Yesudas. Though there have been many different renditions of this song by many different renowned singers, Sabarimala officially uses K. J. Yesudas' voice for Harivarasanam every day.