Friday 29 April 2011

S.Janaki

Born April 23, 1938 (age 73)
Guntur, Madras Presidency, British India
Genres Playback singing, Indian classical
Occupations Singer
Instruments Vocals
Years active 1957–present

Early life

S. Janaki was born into a Telugu Brahmin family in Pallapatla, Repalle village, in Guntur, Madras Presidency, now part of Andhra Pradesh.[6] She was interested in music from early age and started performing at the age of three. She learned music from Sree Paidiswamy, a Nadaswaram Vidwan.

Singing career

Janaki started singing at the age of 19.[7] She later moved to Chennai on the advice of her uncle Chandrashekar and joined AVM Studios as a singer. She started her career in movies by singing songs composed by T. Chalapati Rao in the Tamil movie Vidhiyin Vilayattu in 1957. Subsequently, she performed in the Telugu movie MLA.Janaki became most preferred female singer of south india from 1970s. Janaki went on to become one of the most favourite singers of Ilayaraja, and a phase ensued when she sang at least 2 to 3 songs per movie in all the four South Indian languages. She sang in almost every major South Indian movie in the 1980s and 1990s.From late 1970s ,for more than two decades, she is the top female singer in south indian films. She is having a record of maximum singing compared to any other female singer in the Kannada film industry and she also holds the record of singing the most difficult song in South Films i.e shiva shiva ennada from the kannada film Hemavathi.[8]She also penned many songs for Tamil and Telugu movies as she was extremely good in both the languages.[9] She has also sung in Hindi, Sinhalese, Bengali, Oriya, English, Sanskrit, Konkani, Tulu, Saurashtra, Baduga, Japanese and German.[10]
A devotee of Lord Krishna and Shirdi Sai Baba, she has also recorded Hindu devotional music on Meera.[10]
Her contemporaries include S.P.Balasubramanyam, P B Srinivas, Rajkumar, Ghantasala, T. M. Soundararajan, P. Susheela, Vani Jayaram, K J Yesudas, L R Eeswari, P. Jayachandran, P. Leela, K. S. Chithra, Swarnalatha, Sujatha, Jency and

Personal life

S. Janaki was married to V. Ramprasad. She is now settled in Chennai with her son Murali Krishna, who acted in a few films and has an audio business of his own, and his wife Uma Murali Krishna, a classical dancer (Bharatnatyam and Kuchipudi); they have two daughters named Amruthavarshini and Apsara.She is known for her simplicity and down to earth behaviour.
She is also a close relative of Carnatic classical vocalist Garimella Balakrishna Prasad.[11]

Major awards

National Film Awards

Trivia

  • She has won the Tamil Nadu state awards and Andhra Pradesh State film awards more times than any other female singer.
  • She is the only female singer to won national awards of indian government from three south indian languages(telugu,tamil,malayalam).

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