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Name
Kattassery Joseph Yesudas
or Jesudas
Date of Birth
10th January, 1940
Birth Place
Fort Kochi,
Kerala
Father’s Name
Sh. Augustine Joseph Bagavathor
Mother’s Name
Smt. Alikkutty Joseph
Spouse
Smt.
Prabha
Children
(3 Sons) -
Vinod, Vijay and Vishal
Kattassery Joseph Yesudas or Jesudas, is an
Indian Classical
Musician and a leading playback singer. He has recorded more than
40,000 songs in many languages including Malayalam his Mother Tongue, Tamil,
Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, Marathi, Punjabi,
Sanskrit, Tulu, Russian, Arabic, Latin and English through his long career.
His father, who was a well-known Malayalam classical
musician and stage
actor, was
his first
guru.
Later he joined the Music Academy in
Thrippunithura
and underwent training. For a brief period, he was with Sri Vechur Hari Hara
Subramania Iyer after which he took advanced training from
Chembai Vaidyanatha
Bhagavatar, a maestro of
Classical Music.
Yesudas began his career in
playback singing
in
Kollywood
in the early 60's and by mid 70's he entered
Bollywood.
He has bagged seven
National Film Awards
for the best singer in the Indian film industry. In 2006, he sang 16 film
songs in four
South Indian
languages. He is the only singer who has been accorded the title Asthana
Gayakan (Official singer) of
Kerala State.
He has been awarded the
Padma Sri
(1973) and
Padma Bhushan
(2002).
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.
In 1970, he was nominated to head the Sangeetha Nataka Academy of
Kerala and
was being the youngest person ever to occupy that post. On November 14,
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 Caballe,
and
Zubin Mehta. |
