"YESUDAS"
Kattassery Joseph Yesudas or Jesudas,(Gana Gandharvan) , (born January 10, 1940) is a Indian classical musician and a playback singer. Yesudas sings Indian classical music, devotional and popular songs. He has recorded more than 40,000 songs in many languages including Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tulu, Malay, Russian, Arabic, Latin and English through his long career.
K. J. Yesudas was born in Fort Kochi, Kerala, to Augustine Joseph and Alicekutty. His father, who was a well-known Malayalam classical musician and stage actor, was his first guru. Later he joined the Music Academy in Thrippunithura and underwent training. For a brief period, he was with Sri Vechur Hari Hara Subramania Iyer after which he took advanced training from Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar, a maestro of Classical Music.Although he is a Carnatic Music expert he mastered Hindustani Music. He has taken the words of Sree Narayana Guru, "One Religion, One Caste for all humans" to heart.Yesudas began his career in playback singing in Malayalam and Kollywood movies in the early 60's and by mid 70's he entered Bollywood.