Carnatic vocalist and playback singer K.J. Yesudas, who has enthralled music aficionados across the world with his profound and mellifluous voice for the last six decades, turned 80 on Friday.
Yesudas visited the Mookambika temple at Kollur in Udupi district of Karnataka on Friday along with his family, a practice he has been following for the last four decades. Draped in the traditional Kerala style kasavu mundu and shawl, ‘Dasettan’, as he is known among his hardcore fans cutting across ages, Yesudas offered prayers along with wife Prabha and sons and performed special pujas at the Goddess Saraswathi temple. Hundreds of music buffs gathered at the shrine to wish the octogenarian singer.
Regional newspapers came out with special pages and television channels with exclusive programmes as a tribute to the singer, who has recorded over 80,000 songs in various genres in almost all languages of India, including about 25,000 film songs, Carnatic bhajans and devotional songs.
Arabic, Latin, Russian
Besides Indian languages such as Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Kannada, Bengali, Odia, his voice gave life to songs in Arabic, English, Latin, and Russian.
Yesudas, whom the country honoured with Padma Vibhushan in 2017, is the recipient of eight national awards, 25 Kerala awards, five State awards of Tamil Nadu and four of Andhra Pradesh.
“On the special occasion of his 80th birthday, greetings to the versatile K J Yesudas Ji. His melodious music and soulful renditions have made him popular across all age groups. He has made valuable contributions to Indian culture. Wishing him a long and healthy life,” Mr. Modi tweeted.
In a tweet, Mr. Vijayan said “Birthday greetings to Shri. K J Yesudas. May the years ahead be filled with happiness and success.” The Left veteran also shared a photo of the veteran singer along with the tweet.