K J Yesudas - Sketch using coloured pencil

A tribute to Yesudas who completed his 50th year of playback singing.

Medium : Coloured Pencil

Date : 16 - 3 - 2012

Time : About 1 hour

This sketch was made usig coloured pencil. I am using this medium for the first time. It took me about one hour to complete the sketch. This work is a tribute to Yesudas for his golden jubilee in playback singing

Indian classical musician and playback singer Dr. K J Yesudas has completed his 50th year of play back singing, with over 50,000 songs to his credit. The Golden jubilee of the golden voice was celebrated in November 2011. Yesudas is the ultimate benchmark for Malayalees when it came to singing. Yesudas started his playback singing career in 1961 with Malayalam movie Kaalpaadukal, and has never looked back since. A strong base in Carnatic music and a sweet, melodious voice made him a favourite among music directors. Yesudas has worked with most of the prominent music directors in India and has sung in many Indian and foreign languages, including Malay, Russian, Arabic and Latin.

Here is some notable fact about the iconic singer yesudas:

• Yesudas once recorded 16 film songs in four south Indian languages on the same day in 2006
• After winning the Kerala State Award for Best Playback singer on numerous occasions, he asked that he be ruled out of contention so as to give his peers and newcomers a chance of winning the award. Despite his request, he was still given this award several times in the following years
• Playback singer Unni Menon, who was singing track songs for other prominent singers, got a break when Yesudas, after hearing the track songs Unni Menon had sung for the Malayalam film Kadathu, asked the music director Shyam to record and release the songs as they were. Yesudas was of the opinion that the songs did not need to be rendered by him as Unni Menon had already done it well and there was no need for improvement.
• Harivarasanam, a devotional song musical version composed by G. Devarajan, recited before closing the temple at Sabarimala was sung by Yesudas. Though there have been many different renditions of this song by many different renowned singers, Sabarimala officially uses Yesudas' voice for Harivarasanam every day.
• Yesudas has worked with most of the prominent music directors in India and has sung in many Indian and foreign languages.
• He has won the National Award for the Best Male Playback Singer seven times (the most by any Indian singer), and the State Award for the Best Playback Singer 43 times
• Yesudas has sung in Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tulu, Malay, Russian, Arabic, Latin and English. He has performed in most Indian languages except Assamese, Konkani and Kashmiri.
• 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.
• In 1971, during the Indo-Pakistani War, Yesudas traveled all around Kerala with his musical troupe to raise funds for the Indian Prime Minister's National Defense Fund.
• In 2009 Yesudas began a cross-country musical campaign against terrorism in Thiruvananthapuram, with the motto 'Music For Peace' Kavita Karkare, wife of Hemant Karkare, handed over the torch to Yesudas to mark the launch of the 'Shanthi Sangeetha Yatra'. 

Like his songs, Yesudas and his life continue to fascinate. May the Almighty God gives you chance to sing for the world for a century.

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