Nagoor Babu, known by his stage name Mano, is an Indian playback singer, voice-over artist, actor, producer, television anchor and music composer. He is a recipient of several awards such as the Nandi Awards from the Government of Andhra Pradesh and Kalaimamani award from the Government of Tamil Nadu. 　　Mano has recorded more than 30,000 songs for various Telugu, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Oriya and Bollywood films. He has also performed for over 3000 live concerts across the continents. Notably, he has recorded 2,000 songs for music director Ilayaraja. 　　Mano was born as Nagoor Babu in Sattenapalli, Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh state. His father Rasool, was a musician in the All India Radio, Vijayawada division and his mother Shaheeda, was a popular Stage actress. Inspired heavily by his mother, Mano joined the stage theater and played many historical characters which also involved singing live songs in his own voice. He soon started taking formal training of carnatic classical music under the vocalist Nedunuri Krishnamurthy. Subsequently, he started his film acting career in the late 1970s and acted in about 40 movies as child artist. He featured as a supporting character in films such as Rangoon Rowdy. 　　While in 1979, Mano was shooting for a Telugu film for which the veteran M. S. Viswanathan was the music composer, it so happened that the original singer S. P. Balasubramanyam who was supposed to sing a song could not show up to the recording studio. Accidentally, Mano was asked to show his singing skills by the composer's assistant who was a good friend of Mano's father. Mano rendered a few of the Ghazal songs much to the appreciation of audience present there and the composer himself. From then on, Mano was signed by Viswanathan to sing few track songs upon which the main singer would sing in the final version. In 1982, Mano approached the famous composer Chakravarthy seeking a chance for his brother who was upcoming as a Tabla player. However, Chakravarthy insisted that he wanted an assistant like him to sing track songs. Mano, joined his troop and assisted for almost 2 years. In his tenure with Chakravarthy, Mano sang over 2000 tracks for almost all the leading singers. 　　Mano recorded his debut original song in 1984, for the Telugu film Karpoora Deepam. He was one among the 3 singers that also included S. P. Balasubramanyam and P. Susheela. He sang in a 1985 released Kannada film for musician Hamsalekha. Later he made his debut in Tamil films under Maestro Ilaiyaraaja in 1987 for the film Poovizhi Vasalile. 　　Among all the films that he acted, it was the 1992 released Tamil film Singaravelan that gave him much recognition as a comedy actor. He acted alongside Kamal Haasan and Kushboo in this film. 　　Before beginning his long standing career with Ilaiyaraaja, Nagoor Babu was rechristened as "Mano" to avoid clash of names with the already established singer Nagore E. M. Hanifa. The name was selected and christened by Ilaiyaraaja himself. Mano went on to record many memorable songs under the same composer for his Tamil and Telugu films. In 1987, Mano got a big break by singing popular songs for the film Enga Ooru Pattukkaran. The songs "Shenbagame Shenbagame" and "Madhura Marikozhundu Vasam" became instant hits among the listeners. However he also faced criticism from the critics who dubbed that his voice was an absolute clone to S. P. Balasubramanyam. Taking the criticism in his stride, Mano went on recording as many as 500 successful songs with Ilaiyaraaja and slowly branched out to sing for other Tamil composers as well. He recorded maximum number of duet songs with K. S. Chithra, Swarnalatha and S. Janaki. He simultaneously sang many hundreds of songs in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada film industries. His teaming up with Hamsalekha in Kannada produced many chart buster numbers which are considered evergreen. His few Malayalam, Hindi and Oriya songs also were well received.