Who is K. J. Yesudas?
Kattassery Joseph Yesudas (/jeːʃud̪aːs/; born 10 January 1940) is an Indian playback singer and musician who sings Indian classical, devotional and film songs. He is widely considered one of the greatest singers in the history of Indian music and a cultural icon of Kerala. Yesudas is estimated to have recorded more than 50,000 songs in various Indian languages, including Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Tulu, Hindi, Odia, Bengali, Marathi as well as Arabic, English, Latin, and Russian, in a career spanning six decades. He is often referred to as Gaanagandharvan (transl. The Celestial Singer). Yesudas holds the record for singing 11 songs in different languages in a single day. He has also composed a number of Malayalam film songs during the 1970s and 1980s. Yesudas won the National Award for the Best Male Playback Singer record eight times, the Filmfare Awards South five times, and the State Award for the Best Playback Singer forty-three times, including awards given by the state...