Kattassery Joseph Yesudas (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, Latinand English during a career spanning five decades.[2][3] He has performed in most Indian languages except Assamese, Konkani and Kashmiri.[4][5] He also composed a number of Malayalam film songs in the 1970s and 1980s. Yesudas is fondly called Gana Gandharvan (The Celestial Singer).
Awards and honours
Yesudas has recorded over 50,000 songs and has won scores of accolades including the coveted Padma Shri (1975), Padma Bhushan(2002) and seven National Awards for Best Playback Singer. He is the only singer who has been accorded the title Asthana Gayakan (official singer) of Kerala State.
- National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer a record seven times by the Government of India
- Kerala State Film Awards a record 24 times for the best playback singer by the Government of Kerala
- Karnataka State Film Awards five times for the best playback singer by the Government of Karnataka
- 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
- West Bengal State Film Awards one time for the best playback singer by the Government of West Bengal
- Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1992)
- D. Litt by Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu (1989)
- D. Litt by Kerala University, Kerala (2003)
- D. Litt by Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala (2009)
- Swaralaya – Eenam Awards 2010 – Decade’s Best Talent in Malayalam Music
- Swathi Sangeetha Puraskaram in 2011, highest music award given by Government of Kerala
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._J._Yesudas
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