A living legend for the past 50 years …and counting

S. Janaki was born on April 23, 1938 at Pallaptla of Repalle village, Guntur district, to Srirama Murthy and Satyavathi. Right from her childhood, Janaki showed an immense interest in music and started singing at the age of three. Her first guru was Sree Paidiswamy till she was ten, and on the advice of her uncle, shifted to Chennai to join as a singer for AVM Studios.

She got her major first break in 1957, singing for the Tamil film Vidhiyin Vilayattu. Soon after this, she sang for a Telugu film titled MLA.

A versatile singer with the exceptional quality of changing her voice and tone to suit different actors, Janaki has sung around 20,000 songs, penned lyrics, and sung in a multitude of languages such as Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Oriya, Sanskrit, Konkani, Tulu, Saurashtri, Baduga. Few people know she has songs in English, Japanese, Sinhalese and German too to her credit! She has also bagged a plethora of awards, including national and state awards. She received the national best playback singer award four times in 1976, 1980, 1984 and 1992 for her soulful numbers in 16 Vayadhinile, Oppol, Sithara, and Devar Magan. She has received Tamil Nadu State Government Award 7 times, Kerala State Government Award 14 times and Andhra State Government Award 10 times and Orissa Govt. award once. In 2002, the Govt of Kerala presented her the Cinema Achiever Award. In 2005, she was honoured with the Special Jury Swaralaya Yesudas Award.

Religious by nature and an ardent devotee of Lord Krishna and Shirdi Sai Baba, S. Janaki nowadays keeps herself busy mostly with prayers.