Off the ‘Minor’ Tracks: K. J. Yesudas, Popular Music and Religion in Kerala

Abstract

This article examines the formation of minority subjectivity in the cultural public sphere of Kerala, South India by analysing the case of a famous singer from Kerala, Kattassery Joseph Yesudas or K. J. Yesudas. The singer’s popularity is punctuated by the shifts and ruptures in the music industry in Malayalam – the standard language of the region. This analysis elucidates the historical premises wherein aesthetic judgments shape discourses of identity politics and cultural legitimacy. Therefore, it focuses on the singer’s cult image and the visual manifestations of his voice. In doing so, this article attends to the many layers of the unparalleled popularity Yesudas enjoys. This analysis explores how a specific idea of secularism is foundational in the singer’s popularity and proposes that the idea of sacrifice plays a crucial role within. Clearly, Yesudas’s colossal status is predicated on an idea of performance and this performance is embodied in a perennial sacrifice of the self. Further, the article argues that Yesudas’s popularity and the trajectory of minority politics in Kerala is crucial in the erasure of ‘other’ voices from the domain of popular music in the region.