Udit Narayan Jha

Udit Narayan Jha was born on December 1, 1960 at Saptari, Nepal.He is popularly known as Udit Narayan is a playback singer in commercial Hindi-, Tamil-, Telugu-, Malayalam-, Kannada-, and Nepali-language cinema. He was born in a village called Bharadah in Saptari, Nepal. Udit Narayan has sung more than 15,000 songs in more than 30 different languages.

Udit Narayan began his career by singing Nepali, Maithili,Bhojpuri,Nepal Bhasa at first when he was in his native country, Nepal. After his arrival to India he began singing Hindi songs; a contribution for Bollywood. Then simultaneously he started Bengali, English. He has sung folk songs for Radio Nepal in the early 1970s. In 1978, he moved to Mumbai on a music scholarship. In Bombay, he got trained in Indian classical music for six years at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. He currently lives in Bombay.

He got his first break in 1980, when noted music director (composer) Rajesh Roshan asked him to do a song for the Hindi movie "Unees Bees", in which he got opportunity to sing with his inspiration, Mohammed Rafi. However the actual success story of his career began in 1988 with the successful Bollywood movie Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, fetching him a Filmfare Award[citation needed]. The film also happened to bring actor Aamir Khan, actress Juhi Chawla and playback singer Alka Yagnik to stardom. After the success of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, he became one of the leading playback singers in the Indian film industry, lending his voice mostly in Aamir Khan movies like Dil, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander, etc. At the same time, he became a well-known celebrity in Nepal and sang in most popular Nepalese movies. He even acted in some Nepalese movies like "Kusume Rumal" and "Pirati" but did not achieve that much success.

Throughout the 1990s, he was one of the most successful singers in India. In 1995, his song "Mehndi Lagake Rakhna" from the movie Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge won him his second Filmfare Award after 7 years. The following year 1996, he got nominated for three songs out of five and won his third award for the song "Pardesi Pardesi" from Raja Hindustani.

He has worked with musicians like Rahul Dev Burman, Jagjit Singh, Anu Malik, Jatin Lalit, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Kalyanji-Anandji, Bappi Lahiri, Vishal Bhardwaj, A. R. Rahman, Nadeem-Shravan, Rajesh Roshan, Shankar Mahadevan, Himesh Reshammiya, Pritam Chakraborty, Vishal-Shekhar etc., and leading directors like Yash Chopra, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Karan Johar, etc. These include Darr, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Dil To Pagal Hai, Mohabbatein, Devdas, Kal Ho Naa Ho, Swades, Veer Zaara, etc.