Gana Gandarvan turns 55 as a singer

Songs with his incredible voice steals its way into our heart. It has been 55 years since his voice has been doing it to music biffs across the world. Yes, veteran singer

K J Yesudas

who is fondly called as

Gana Gandarvan

has been mesmerizing them for the past 55 years. The first song sung by Yesudas is Jaathi Bhedam Matha Dwesham (music:

M B Sreenivasan

) on 14 November 1961 and from then on he has sung more than 40,000 songs in a number of Indian languages as well as Malay, Russian, Arabic, Latin and English.

Yesudas has performed in most Indian languages except Assamese, Konkani and Kashmiri. He has won the National Award for the Best Male Playback Singer seven times, 5 Filmfare Awards and the State Award for the Best Playback Singer 43 times, which consists of awards by the state governments of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and West Bengal. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1975 and the Padma Bhushan in 2002 by the Government of India for his contributions towards the arts.