Nostalgia alert: Nightingale of South, S Janaki recorded her first song on this day in 1957!

On April 4, 1957, a star was born in Chennai and throughout the course of her 60-year-long career, she has entertained the audience with over 40,000. Yes, we are talking about none other than the Nightingale of South India, S Janaki. Popularly known as Janaki amma, S Janaki started her career as a playback singer in the Tamil movie Vidhiyin Vilayattu in 1957 on April 4th. Almost immediately, she sang for Telugu film MLA. And in the same year, she sang film songs in 6 languages, including Kannada.

S Janaki has sung the highest number of songs in Kannada. Her duets with Dr. Rajkumar, P B Srinivas and SP Balasubrahmanyam are considered evergreen. Apart from Indian language songs, Janaki has sung in Japanese, German, English, French and Sinhalese. She was the go-to singer for songs that featured children as she would easily modify her voice to sound like children. From GK Venkatesh to Ashwath to Ilaiyaraaja to Hamsalekha to AR Rahaman, she has worked with a wide range of composers from different generations.



Janaki, in an interview, had said that the toughest song of her singing career was the Kannada song 'Shiva shiva ennada naaligeyeke' from the movie Hemavathi.

Janaki has won four National Film Awards and 33 different State Film Awards in her career. The University of Mysore awarded her an honorary doctorate. She has been awarded the Kalaimamani award from the government of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Rajyotsava award from Government of Karnataka. However, in 2013, she refused to accept the Padma Bhushan award given by the Indian government, and pointed out that it was too little and had come “too late” and that South Indian artists were not given their due recognition.

After a 60-year-long illustrious career, S Janaki retired on October 28, 2017 with a concert held at Mysuru.