Veteran Singer Vani Jairam No More; Condolences Pour In

Veteran Playback singer, and National Award winner Vani Jairam, who was awarded the third-highest-civilian award in India, Padma Bhushan, died due to an injury on her forehead. According to the Thousand Lights police, the singer was found dead at her residence.

Vani Jairam, who lived at her house on Haddows Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai breathed her last under unknown circumstances. She was 78 years old and reportedly died alone.

She won the National Award for Playback singing thrice and had received the State awards from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Maharashtra, and Odisha, for her contribution.

Vani Jairam predominantly worked with legendary composers like Ilaiyaraaja, RD Burman, KV Mahadevan, OP Nayyar, and Madan Mohan among others.

Vani Jairam, born as Kalaivani on November 30 in 1945 at Vellore is a renowned Playback singer. She was born into a family of classical musicians, and she was enrolled for a formal Carnatic training under the guidance of Kadalur Srinivas Iyengar, TR Balasubramanian, and RS Mani. She had a liking to Hindi songs she listened to on Radio Ceylon, and she memorized and reproduced the entire orchestration of the songs at a very young age.

She had a film career of about five decades and recorded about 10,000 songs in major Indian languages including Telugu, Tamil, Tulu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Bengali, Bhojpuri, and Oria. At a tender age of eight, Vani Jairam gave her first public performance at the All India Radio, Madras. She was also an employee with the SBI.