K.J. Yesudas

He was born in Fort Kochi in 1940 to a Latin Catholic family; his father Augustine Joseph was a stage singer and actor. He trained at the RLV Music Academy in Tripunithura and the Swathi Thirunal College in Thiruvananthapuram, and sang his first Malayalam film song in 1961. By the end of the 1960s he was the dominant male voice of Malayalam and a major presence in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada film, with a parallel career as a Carnatic concert musician.

Salil Chowdhury brought him to Hindi for Chhoti Si Baat (1975); Ravindra Jain's Chitchor (1976) made him a Hindi name, with Gori Tera Gaon Bada Pyara winning the National Award and Jab Deep Jale Aana a Filmfare nomination. Rajesh Roshan's Swami (Ka Karoon Sajni), Ravindra Jain's Sawan Ko Aane Do (1979), Bappi Lahiri's Dada (Dil Ke Tukde Tukde Karke) and Jaidev's Alaap followed. He stopped singing Hindi regularly in the mid-1980s when the kind of film he sang for stopped being made.

He has won the National Award for Best Male Playback Singer eight times, more than any other singer, across five languages; the Padma Shri (1975), Padma Bhushan (2002) and Padma Vibhushan (2017). He is known for his annual Sabarimala pilgrimage, his Carnatic concerts and his advocacy of music teaching; he divides his time between Kerala and the United States.

Yesudas's voice is a warm, flawlessly tuned baritone with a Carnatic singer's control of pitch and breath and a softness in the Hindi recordings that composers in Bombay found new. He sang Hindi with a slight southern roundness in the vowels that became part of the charm. In the Rajshri films he sounded like what the films were about: decency, patience, a small town in the morning.