S.Janaki

S. Janaki is an eminent playback singer from South India. The melodious singer was born on April 23, 1938 at Pallaptla of Repalle village in Andhra Pradesh. She has become the queen of hearts with her euphonic voice. From childhood, Janaki showed her immense interest in music. She started singing at the mere age of three. Initially, she started taking lessons from Sree Paidiswamy and continued her training till the age of ten. Gradually on the advice of her uncle, she shifted to Chennai to join as a singer in AVM Studio.

In 1957, she brought her career on track with Tamil film 'Vidhiyin Vilayattu'. She worked in the company of T. Chalapati Rao and soon after this, she got the opportunity to sing for a Telugu film 'MLA'. Janaki has also written the song lyrics for many Tamil and Telugu films. In her career, she has sung around 20,000 songs that too in most of the languages of India. She has the exceptional quality of changing her voice, moreover she can sing in a variety of tones.

This suggests the fact that she has sung in Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Sinhalese, Bengali, Oriya, English, Sanskrit, Konkani, Tulu, Saurashtra, Baduga, Japanese and German too. Janaki has got many awards including national and state awards to her credit. She has received national award four times for the best playback singer in 1976, 1980, 1984, 1992 for her incredible songs in '16 Vayadhinile', 'Oppol', 'Sithara', and 'Devar Magan' respectively.

She has received Tamil Nadu State Government Award for 7 times, Kerala State Government Award for 14 times and Andhra State Government Award for 10 times. Here the list is not completed, she has also received the honor of 'Kalai Mamani' in 1986 and 'Sur Singar' award in 1987. In 2002, she was appreciated by the Government of Kerala with 'Cinema Achiever Award'.

Recently, she received Special Jury Swaralaya Yesudas Award (2005) for her outstanding performance in music. S.Janaki is religious by nature and a great devotee of Lord Krishna and Shirdi Sai Baba. In the present date, she passes most of her time in prayers. She resides with her son, Murali Krishna and daughter-in-law, Uma Murali Krishna. The melody queen is still charming and captivating people with her ever-melodious voice.