He had just concluded a performance when he was stricken. Nicknamed “the Mesmerizer,” he recorded 3,500 songs in 11 languages for some of India’s biggest movie stars.
Krishna Kumar Kunnath, popularly known as KK, whose mellifluous voice gave India some of Bollywood’s biggest hit songs of the 1990s and 2000s, died on Tuesday after a performance in Kolkata. He was 53. The death was confirmed by his publicist. KK had been performing in an auditorium packed with college students when, after singing his last song of the evening, cameras caught him wiping his brow as he was led offstage in a hurry. He was declared dead at a hospital soon after. The cause was not yet known, his publicist said. Krishna Kumar Kunnath was born in 1968 in Delhi into a Malayali family — a people of mixed ethnic heritage from southern India. His parents were C.S. Nair and Kunnath Kanakavalli. In college he took to rock and was a fan of Kishore Kumar, a well known Bollywood playback singer — a vocalist who dubs the songs for a movie’s lead character. After a brief stint as a marketing executive, KK, as he was called, decided to follow his passion for music. With no mentor in the competitive recording industry, he initially struggled to make a name for himself, resorting to singing at hotels to make ends meet.
