Daijiworld News Network - Mangalore (MB)
Mangalore, Nov 22: Seagram's Imperial Blue are sponsoring a live show of sensational multilingual singer KK on Nehru Maidan here on Thursday, November 23 at 7-30 pm.
Krishnakumar Kunnath, with family roots in Kerala, is known only as KK to his thousands of fans was educated in Delhi but has now settled in Mumbai because of his singing career.
As a child he wanted to be a doctor. Destiny made him a singer instead. K K is on a high note in his singing career and today needs no introduction.
Profile
A commerce graduate from Delhi University, K K realized very late in life that he could make singing as his career. A die-hard fan of Kishore Kumar, K K switched from Hindi to English songs during his teens. His versatile voice was soon tapped by various as agencies in Delhi for jingles. He even formed a rock band with his friends and played drums for two other rock bands and did vocals.
After college, K K did a brief stint as a marketing executive, but after eight months gave up the job. Having married his childhood sweethear Jyothy in 1991, as destined for the big time K K arrived in Mumbai in 1994 finally. K K gave his demo tape to Louis Banks, Ranjit Barot, Shiv Mathur and Leslie Lewis to get a break in the music scene.
In 1994, UTV gave him his first break in Mumbai and since then has never looked back. He worked with his mentor Leslie Lewis in his first jingle in Mumbai and success soon followed him. In a span of four years, he has to his credit more than 3500 jingles in 11 Indain languages.
Vishal Bhardwaj, who noticed this new talent, gave him the much-needed break in Hindi cinema in Maachis. “I was one of the playback singers in Gulzar’s hit number ‘Chodh aaye hum who galiyan …’ “, he says. Vishal Bhardwaj also gave him his first solo number in Hum Paanchi Ek Daal Ke. In 1999, K K bagged the prestigious Screen Award as the best singer for his solo (non – filmy) album Pal under Sony Music. He teamed up with his mentor Leslie Lewis for Pal.
K K surely has come a long way since ‘Chodh aaye hum who galiyan…’ and ‘Chappa chappa…’ (Maachis) . K K has worked with all top music directors like A R Rahman, Ismail Darbar, Nadeem-Shravan, Anu Malik, Shankar Ehsann & Loy, Himmesh Reshmmiya, Sandesh, M M Kreem, Jatin-Lalit, Vishal Shekar, Pritam and Saleem Suleman.
K K has also lent his voice for most of the top stars in the industry from Amitabh Bachchan to Hrithik Roshan and Tusshar Kapoor to Akshaye Khanna. Down South, he has worked with well-known maestro Ilayaraj, Harris Jayraj, Deva, Vidyasagar and Mani Sharma.
K K has sung almost 400 songs in Hindi and more than 100 songs in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada languages in a short span. K K has performed live concerts for Corporate giants like Hero Honda, Toyota, Glaxo, Seagram’s, IBM, Sun Microsoft, Microsoft, Fidelity, Citibank, INFLS, LG, Sony Eriksson, Air Sahara, Ultra Tech Cement, JP Cement, Maruti Udyog and many more. He has also performed for schools, colleges and other educational institutes like IIT Kanpur, IIT Khadakpur, IIT Rurki, IIT Chennai, MDI-Gurgaon, IIMS-Lucknow, HT Youth Nexus.