Notable Facts About Yesudas On His 74th Birthday

KJ Yesudas, as we all know, is one of the most loved and respected singers in our country. He has sung almost 50,000 songs in his career and that too in many languages including Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tulu, Malay, Russian, Arabic, Latin and English. He is a man with a stunning career of five decades in the industry.

On this auspicious occasion, Oneindia brings to you some very notable facts about KJ Yesudas, the singer.

1) Yesudas has performed at the classical concert for 36 times in the 36-year-old Soorya Music festival organised by Soorya Krishnamoorthy. This is one among his concerts which is highly followed by serious musical lovers and often rated as the most popular among his concerts in India.

2) Producer Raman Nambiyath introduced Yesudas as a playback singer in the film Kaalpaadukal on Nov 14, 1961.

3) After winning the Kerala State Award for Best Playback singer on numerous occasions, he asked his name to be removed out of contention so as to give his fellows and newcomers a chance of winning the award. Despite his request, he was still given this award several times in the following years.

4) Yesudas made his debut as music director in the Malayalam movie, Azhakulla Seleena (1973).

5) Playback singer Unni Menon, who was singing track songs for other prominent singers, got a break when Yesudas asked the music director Shyam to record and release the songs as they were. Yesudas was of the opinion that the songs did not need to be rendered by him as Unni Menon had already done it well and there was no need for improvement.

6) Harivarasanam, the devotional song recited before closing the temple at Sabarimala is sung by Yesudas. Though there have been many different renditions of this song by many different renowned singers, Sabarimala officially uses Yesudas' voice for Harivarasanam even today.

7) Yesudas is known as Gana Gandharvan for his continuous contributions to music.

8) Swaralaya Yesudas award is a prestigious award for music artists in recognition of their outstanding performance. The award is instituted jointly by Swaralaya, an organisation that promotes music and Kairali Channel, based in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Awards have been given annually since 2000. Yesudas presents the awards at a Gandharva Sandhya every January.

9) Yesudas has won National film awards seven times for playback singing, the most awards won by any singer.