The singer for all times

The celestial singer has turned 75. It’s a special day for his fans, and a few turned up at Kollur Mukambika temple. They had a special treat of watching Yesudas sing, very closely.

This great singer, belonging to the club of giants like Talat Muhammad, Muhammad Rafi, and Manna Dey, is a quite an influence; perhaps, often more challenging than the rest of the club, thanks to his classical background, and more important, his 100 billion dollar voice. Few singers across the world have that gift. Nearest comparable voices include Nat King Cole and Jim Reeves in Western music and Manna Dey in India. All these big talents lack velvety masculinity of Yesudas.

He is the scale up on which many singers today fall short in talent, virtuosity, genuineness, and knowledge. Thus he is the living legend. That is all the more evident last year in Malayalam movies. There has been a flux of singers and most of the songs were scattered among them. As well this, nature of the songs has changed as much as the movie-heroes. Young actors prefer singers with boyish voices, and nobody cares about quality and perfection. Many leading singers including MG Sreekumar and G Venugopal recorded fewer songs last year.

Amid this chaos, this now 75-year-old singer managed more than 10 songs here and a few in Tamil movies as well. Also he brought out many devotional songs. Alongside, his old songs including those in Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam were widely listened to on internet. That means the singer still rules the roost. Young singers struggle to find their identities. They seem eternally overshadowed by Yesudas phenomenon. Creating a different voice is quite easy; only one has to sing in own voice. But settling in public mind means the singer needs oodles of talent. In his prime, which lasted until his early 60s, Yesudas voice was a one-stop-shop for all. Ask him to take a semi-classical song to perfection, he would do it hands down, then give him a melody, the song becomes soothingly great, and then try him with a rattling disco stuff, his voice would take a raw tone. No singer could do it.

He is at once many singers in one voice. SP Balasubramyam, leading south Indian singer with great fan following, has done a few of this stuff wonderfully. He can jam a fast number quite easily but when it comes to more meditative numbers, he falters. There is an SPB in Yesudas, there is a Rafi in him, and there is a versatile classical musician at the base of his singing persona. That is why Yesudas remains the singer for all seasons and emotions. Give him pathos, his voice takes a deep note, then try a pleasant number, there comes sunny smiling voice from his throat. Replacing this singer has thus become a very difficult. Yesudas is compared with Yesudas of the yesteryears not with any other singer today; perhaps that may be the difficult part of being Yesudas.

It takes an epic mix of talent and virtuosity for a singer to reach him. Plus this comes his decades of studio experience. Given this, new singers need to go a long way. It seems there is a major crisis in film music in Kerala today. Many new talents have emerged, thanks to TV singing contests. Of them most female voices fare better than male singers. Most leading female singers, though their voices and skills are in their prime, have been sidelined. These young girls cut their path, albeit competition is stiff. But new generation male singers seem caught in a hook. They sing, perhaps more songs than Yesudas do now. But none of them could enter public psyche. Their voices sound more like those from TV commercial songs. Songs they render have all the elements that Yesudas once made great: romantic wooing, melody, dance numbers, pathos, and everything. But what happens is that these singers can’t prove their identities through the songs they sing.

Yes, they croon, and that reminds us more of things missing in them. Many songs we hear today want us to desire: “ if that singer were a little more expressive at the soprano, if he were able to bent his voice a little there, a little here, why couldn’t he bring his voice a notch down to sound more meditative”. Yes, many music lovers ask these questions every day. Even singers seem in a fix. When they open their mouth at the time of recording, they appear to be in trouble.

The trouble comes from lack of tonal beauty, depth, poor knowledge of notations, lack of improvisation, and more important, they lack emotional intelligence that songs require. Each song is about an emotion on the screen, where somebody loves a girl, or broods over a problem. Scenes express these emotions, but the playbacks we hear in the cinema halls don’t express them. What we hear instead is just a slim womanly voice from the throat of a male singer tunefully goes, but with no harmony. Once out of the theatre, we don’t give damn about repeating the song in mind. In some cases the songs themselves are very melodies by nature, where singer’s contribution doesn’t require much, and then the song catches with the public. There too, the singer has nothing to claim about, because any singer could do it. So most male voices today are replaceable. The general view today is “Who cares who sings”.

Yesudas is least controversial for his fame, considering rows many lesser known personalities make. The qualities that define him are his piety, and devotion to music and God. Recently, however, some of the so called ‘Kerala intellectuals’ have tried to limit Yesudas to ‘just-another-singer -with-a-good-voice’, and articles of this kind have appeared in media. That didn’t work well, because the singer has long become a passion in public minds. His detractors have to sing and prove that they have far better stuff at their disposal, because mere verbosity wouldn’t do. Stop blaming this great singer for all times.

(The views expressed are personal. Some of the other articles of the columnist: A Michael Jackson in the making? Has Yoga got side effects? How stupid are you? Women, be careful while in New York, Explaining mysteries to kids and Yes, women go crazy over Saritha!