Dr. K J Yesudas

         Dr. K J Yesudas (Kattassery Joseph Yesudas) is one of the famous Indian Classical Musician and playback singer. He was born on 10 January 1940 in Fort Kochi, Kerala. As the name remembers he is malayalies dearest dasettan. He has known to be the Gana gandharvan. His father is Augustine Joseph and and he was a Malayalam classical musician and stage performer.His mother is Elizabeth Joseph.  Yesudas sings Indian classical, devotional, and popular music. He sung in Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi. But he is famous in Malayalam film industry. He gave his contribution to classicl, carnatic, devotional and film songs. His first guru was his father and he started to sing in very early stage of  his life. He won gold medal when participated a local competition in fort Kochi at the age of seven. First he trained in music at R.L.V. Music Academy in Thrippunithura and Completed the Ganabooshanam course. After that  he joined at Sree Swati Thirunal music college, Thiruvananthapuram . He took advanced training from Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar. In 2011 he completed his 50 Years as a Play Back Singer.

        Yesudas started playback singing in the middle of the 1960's. Yesudas began his career in playback singing in the Malayalam movie Kaalpadukal and Tamil movies in the early 1960s. In the middle of 1970’s he started playback singing in Bollywood.His first Hindi song he sung was for the movie Jai Jawan Jai Kissan (1971), but the first released movie was Chhoti Si Baat. He has sung Hindi songs for famous actors in Hindi cinema like 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 movie Chitchor, with music given by Ravindra Jain.

      He was invited by the Soviet Union government to perform at music concerts in various cities in the USSR. On November 14, 1999, Yesudas was presented with an honorary award by UNESCO for "Outstanding Achievements in Music and Peace". Yesudas wife is  Prabha. They have three sons, Vinod, Vijay and Vishal. His son Vijay Yesudas is musician who won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer in 2007 and 2013. His family is currently settled in Chennai and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Awards and honours

      He has recorded more than 50,000 songs in many languages including the  Padma Shri (1975), Padma Bhushan (2002) and seven National Awards for Best Playback Singer. He is the only singer who has been titled Asthana Gayakan of  Kerala State.

• National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer  record got seven times by the Government of India
• Kerala State Film Awards  record 24 times for the best playback singer by the Government of Kerala
• 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
•  Karnataka State Film Awards five times for the best playback singer by the Government of Karnataka
• West Bengal State Film Awards one time for the best playback singer by the Government of West Bengal
• Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1992

 

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