K. J. Yesudas

Kattassery Joseph Yesudas is an Indian Carnatic musician and film playback singer. Yesudas sings Indian classical, devotional and cinematic songs. He has recorded more than 50,000 songs in a number of Indian languages as well as Russian, Arabic, Latin and English during a career spanning more than five decades. He has performed in most Indian languages except Assamese, Konkani and Kashmiri. He also composed a number of Malayalam film songs in the 1970s and 1980s. Yesudas is fondly called Gana Gandharvan (The Celestial Singer). He is considered to be a cultural icon of the Malayalam language - as well as of its ethnic group spread across the world - due largely to the fact that his songs have been profoundly ingrained into the minds of Malayalam speaking people for five decades. Yesudas has won the National Award for the Best Male Playback Singer seven times, the Filmfare Awards five times, and the State Award for the Best Playback Singer forty-three times, which consists of awards by...