Vani Jairam

Vani Jairam was a singer whose career spanned decades of film playback in more than 19 Indian languages, along with concerts and recordings of Carnatic and light-classical Hindustani music, bhajans, thumris and abhangs. She was named for the Padma Bhushan in 2023 in the field of art, from Tamil Nadu ^[1].

A gift recognised early

Vani Jairam was born in Tamil Nadu on 30 November 1943 ^[2]. As a small child she could already identify ragas, and from the age of eight she sang on stage and on All India Radio, after training in Carnatic music with teachers such as Cuddalore Srinivasa Iyengar and T. R. Balasubramanian ^[2]. She took a degree in economics at Queen Mary’s College, Chennai, and worked for the State Bank of India before turning fully to music ^[2]. She later trained in Hindustani music under Ustad Abdul Rahman Khan ^[2].

Guddi and after

In 1971 the composer Vasant Desai asked her to sing three songs for the Hindi film Guddi ^[2]. Bole re papihara made her famous, and Hum ko man ki shakti dena is still sung as a morning prayer in many schools ^[2]. She went on to sing for Madan Mohan, Naushad, O. P. Nayyar and R. D. Burman, and sang the songs of Ravi Shankar’s score for Gulzar’s Meera ^[2]. She also had lasting hits in Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali and Odia ^[2].

After moving south in 1973, she sang thousands of songs in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu, starting with M. S. Viswanathan’s Malligai en mannan mayangum ^[2]. Three National Film Awards for playback singing came her way, in 1976, 1980 and 1991 ^[2].

She died at her home in Chennai on 4 February 2023, ten days after her Padma Bhushan was announced ^[2][3].