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Dr. Kattassery Joseph Yesudas (born January 10, 1940), is a noted South Indian musician and a leading playback singer in most of the Indian languages. His film songs, mostly in Malayalam, continue to attract millions throughout the world.
Yesudas was born in Fort Kochi, Kerala to Augustine and Elizabeth Joseph. His father Augustine Joseph, who was his first guru (teacher), was a well known Malayalam classical musician and stage actor of his time.
Yesudas is a Malayali singer, and exponent of carnatic music. He joined the Music Academy in Thirupunithura and won a gold medal for music at a local competition in Fort Kochi at age 7. He later trained under the legendary Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar in Classical Music, and this training, abruptly cut short by the guru's demise in 1974, still stood him in good stead.
In his career he has sung more than 30,000 songs for thousands of Indian movies in many languages such as Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Telugu and Bengali. He was also invited by the Soviet Government to perform music concerts in various cities of the U.S.S.R in 1965.
His first movie playback song was for the movie Kalpadukal, in 1961. His first Hindi song was for the movie Anand Mahal, with music given by Salil Chowdhury. His most popular Hindi songs are from the movie Chitchor, with music given by Ravindra Jain.
The President of India conferred on him the title of Padmashree in 1973. he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2002.
Dr. Yesudas and his wife Prabha have three sons, Vinod, Vijay and Vishal. The family is currently settled in Madras, India.
Titles and awards
- Seven National Awards for the best Playback singer.
- The Kerala State Playback Singing Award 16 times since 1970.
- Padmashree by President of India in 1973.
- Sangeetha Raja by Chembai in 1974.
- Sangeetha Chakravarthy in 1988.
- Sangeetha Sagaram in 1989.
- Best playback singer for the year 1988 from Tamil Nadu Government and Andhra Pradesh Government respectively.
- Annamalai University honored him with a Doctorate in 1989.
- Government of Kerala and `The Sangeeta Nataka Akademi' conferred the title of `Aashtana Gayakan’ in 1992.
- Government of Madhya Pradesh gave the `Annual Latha Mangeshkar Award’ in 1992.
- NATIONAL CITIZENS AWARD in 1994
See Also
External link
- Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar, guru of K.J.Yesudas
- K.J. Yesudas's web site
- IMDb entry for K.J. Yesudas
- Site Dedicated to K.J. Yesudas
- K.J.Yesudas Concert - Tampa,FL