Tamil cinema has had a bruising few days. The industry was still coming to terms with the loss of Bharathiraja and Bhagyaraj when word arrived from Mysuru that another giant had fallen silent. S Janaki, the singer millions grew up hearing on radio, in theatres, and at weddings, passed away on July 11 at a private hospital, aged 88.
News of her passing was shared by her granddaughter, Apsara Vydyula, on Instagram. She wrote that Janaki had left the family peacefully, surrounded by their love, and asked well-wishers to respect the family’s privacy as they grieved.
A voice without borders
Few careers in Indian playback singing matched the sheer scale of Janaki’s. Across roughly six decades, she lent her voice to an estimated 48,000 songs in about 20 languages — Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi chief among them, alongside forays into Odia, Tulu, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, and even English, Japanese, German and Sinhala. It is a body of work that resists easy summary, the kind that turns a singer into a shared inheritance for generations of listeners.
Humble beginnings
Born on April 23, 1938, in Pallapatla, then part of the Madras Presidency and now in Andhra Pradesh, Janaki had little in the way of formal musical training to begin with. She picked up the fundamentals under a Nadaswaram exponent, and was singing on stage by the age of nine. That early promise eventually opened the door to playback singing, and her debut arrived in 1957 with the Tamil film Vidhiyin Vilayattu. She was just 19.
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From there, the songs never stopped coming. She is remembered as having sung more in Kannada than in any other language, and her pairings with PB Srinivas, SP Balasubrahmanyam and Dr Rajkumar remain touchstones of south Indian film music. To her Kannada fanbase she was “Gaana Kogile”; more broadly, she carried the title “Nightingale of South India” with quiet dignity.
Janaki, the person
SP Balasubramanyam was vocal about his admiration for the singer everyone in the industry called Janaki Amma. Their banter on a Tamil reality singing show captured her wit — when SPB claimed he sang well always, she shot back that she always sang well, while he only managed it now and then. At another concert, sharing a stage with fellow legend P Susheela, Janaki took on a male voice for a duet, playfully acting the part of a lover serenading Susheela, breaking into laughter each time her voice dipped into character. Beyond the accolades, colleagues remembered her as someone who never let age dim her playfulness. SPB, on another stage, praised how she always preserved her inner child all through her life with such elegance.
Honours and one refusal
That humility, however, was never fake modesty. Janaki knew exactly what her career had been worth. Her shelf of honours included four National Film Awards and 33 state film awards, an honorary doctorate from the University of Mysore, the Kalaimamani from Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka’s Rajyotsava Prashasti. In 2013, she turned down the Padma Bhushan, saying the recognition had come too late — she had long felt that her contribution merited the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour.
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Her personal life carried its own quiet sorrows. She lost her husband, V Ramprasad, in 1997, after which unadorned white sarees became her enduring look. This January, she lost her son, Murali Krishna, as well.
State honours and last rites
Karnataka Chief Minister DK Shivakumar called Janaki’s family to offer condolences and ordered that her final rites be conducted with full state honours, deputing Minister Yathindra Siddaramaiah to represent the government. Her mortal remains were to be kept at Maharaja’s College Grounds in Mysuru on Sunday morning for the public to pay respects, before rites at a farm in Kaniyanahundi village — a location she herself was said to have wished for.
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