Daijiworld News Network - Mangalore (GA) - pics - Dayanand Kukkaje

Mangalore, Jan 9: Noted playback singer Dr K J Jesudas visited the Ullal Dargah near here on Tuesday January 9 evening.

His wife Prabha, son Vijay and other family members too were present with him on the occasion.  He visited the Dargah and offered prayers as well as Niyaz too.

He was welcomed by Ullal Dargah president Haji U K Ibrahim and others.  He had a little chat with those who were present on the spot.  He also addressed the media for a brief while before proceeding to Shri Mookambika Temple at Kollur near Kundapur.

Jesudas has a special name in Indian cinema as well as in the world of classical music.  His soul-stirring voice lends itself well to both Indian classical, devotional and popular songs. Jesudas (the word literally means Servile of Jesus in Malayalam) was born in Fort Kochi, Kerala to Augustine Joseph and Elizabeth Joseph.

In playback singing Yesudas, as a talent was discovered by Salil Chowdhury and nurtured by Ravindra Jain.  He has recorded more than 40,000 songs for many languages including Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Gujarati, Oriya, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tulu, Russian, Arabic, Latin and English through his long career. He has sung 16 film songs in four South Indian languages on the same day in 2006 at AVM Studio, Chennai.

Jesudas has, till date, performed in almost all the major cities of the world. In his music concerts in the Middle East he performs Arabic songs in Carnatic style. He is the only singer who has the title Asthana Gayakan (Official singer) of Kerala State. He was awarded the Padmashree (1973) and Padma Bhushan (2002) by the president of India.