Celebrating 60 years of melodious singing of Yesudas 

 

Yesudas recorded his first popular song Jaathi Bhedam Matha Dwesham (music: M. B. Sreenivasan) on 14 November 1961. The singer considers those four lines he got to sing to start his career in films as a huge blessing as it was written by none other than Sree Narayana Guru, the most respected saint-poet-social reformer of Kerala. The film was Kalpadukal (1962), based on social reform during the life and times of Sree Narayana Guru. He associated with popular singers of those times like P. Leela, Santha P. Nair, K. P. Udayabhanu, S. Janaki etc. and lyricists like P. Bhaskaran and Nambiyath. He sang the lines of poet Kumaran Asan for this film. After the initial years he became the most sought after by established music directors of that time, M. B. Sreenivasan, G. Devarajan, V. Dakshinamoorthy, Br Lakshmanan, M. S. Baburaj and many others. Thus began his career in playback singing which included the Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada movies thereafter.

He got the first major break with the hit Malayalam film named Bharya (music by G. Devarajan and lyrics by Vayalar Ramavarma). In 1967, he sang hit songs in the composition of M.S.Baburaj for the film Udhyogastha directed by P.Venu. He also sang in Tamil for Bommai first (music: S. Balachander), but the first released movie was Konjum Kumari (music: Veda). In 1965, he was invited by the Soviet Union government to perform at music concerts in various cities in the USSR and also sang a Russian song over Radio Kazakhstan. The trio of Salil, Yesudas and Prem Nazir entered the Malayalam Cinema Industry of the 1970s.

In 1970 he was nominated to head the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy and was the youngest person ever to occupy the post.

(From: Wiki)

#Yesudas