Birthday: Friday, December 25, 1925
Star Sign : Capricorn
First Film : Gul Baloch
BIOGRAPHY
Mohammed Rafi (December 24, 1924 - July 31, 1980) is probably the most famous Hindi playback singer of yesteryears. He was born at Kotla Sultan Singh village near Amritsar in Punjab, now in Pakistan to a middle class Muslim family. His songs are still listened to all over the world. People from various nations from India to Kenya to UK to West Indies were won over by his sweet warm melodies.
Along with Lata Mangeshkar, he shares the record for having sung the greatest number of songs, approximately 26,000 during his film career spanning 40 years (from 1940 to 1980). Rafi has also sung a large number of songs with Geeta Dutt and Asha Bhonsle.
His songs ranged from classical numbers to patriotic songs, sad lamentations to highly romantic numbers, qawaalis to ghazals and bhajans, and from slow melancholic tunes to fast fun filled songs. He had a strong command of Hindi and Urdu and a powerful range that could accommodate this variety.
He sung for Rajendra Kumar and Jeetendra, the tragedy heroes, Dilip Kumar and Bharat Bhushan, and comedian Johnny Walker. His voice personified the rebellious image of the star, Shammi Kapoor and also gave expression to smaller and younger heroes like Biswajit and Joy Mukherjee . Rafi has also sung for singer-actor Kishore Kumar in a few movies like Raagini, Baaghi Shehzaada, and Shararat. The credit for his singing is usually given as Mohd. Rafi.
At the age of 14, Rafi moved to Lahore and learned Indian classical music from Ghulam Ali Khan . Rafi started imitating his idol G. M. Durrani and became a playback singer.
Rafi's first song was in Punjabi for the film Gul Baloch - it was a duet with the singer Zeenat Begum. The song was 'Soniye nee, Heeriye nee', composed by Shyam Sunder. Shyam Sunder was impressed with his voice and gave Rafi seven songs in another film Bazaar. Rafi's talent was noticed by composer Firoz Nizami, who found him a job at Radio Lahore. Rafi's first hit song was 'yaha badla wafa ka', composed by Firoz Nizami. It earned Rafi great fame. Producer of film 'Amar Raj', J B Wadia went looking for him because he wanted only Rafi to sing songs for his film.
Rafi also did brief roles in movies like Laila-Majnu (1945) and Jugnu. In Laila-Majnu, he was seen singing 'tera jalwa' as a part of the chorus.
2 comments:
Rafi was a sensation in the history of playback singing and SJ acknowledged his talent over the years.
Rafi Saheb was, is and will always be remebered as "Satwan Sur" in playback singing. The command of Rafi over sur and tal with emotion is incomparable. Even Lata is far behind Rafi's qualities.
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