S. Janaki

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

S. Janaki · Sistla Janaki was born in 1938 in a village in what is now Andhra Pradesh and died in 2026 in Mysuru. She was an Indian playback singer and occasional composer, affectionately called Janaki Amma and the Nightingale of South India. Her father was a doctor and teacher. She first performed at the age of nine and learned the basics of music from a nadaswaram player. On her uncle's advice she moved to Chennai, where she worked with the composer R. Sudarsanam at AVM Studios.

Music and breakthrough

She began in 1957 with the Tamil film Vidhiyin Vilayattu and that same year already sang in six languages. Her mother tongue was Telugu, but she sang in about twenty languages, including Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi. In total she recorded more than 48,000 songs for films, albums, television and radio, most of them in Kannada. In Telugu films she had hit after hit for years from 1957, until about the mid-1990s.

Influence

Her voice was praised for its expressiveness and modulation. She won four National Film Awards and 33 state awards. In 2013 she refused the Padma Bhushan because it came too late for her. In 2017 she bade farewell with a concert in Mysuru, with the Malayalam lullaby Amma Poovinum, although in 2018 she still sang for the Tamil film Pannaadi. In this way she sang for sixty years for virtually every major actress of South Indian cinema.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1994Astalakshmi Ganasudha
• ?Naan Vanangugiren (soundtrack)