Monday, September 9, 2013
MOHAMMAD RAFI (24 December 1924 – 31 July 1980)
was an Indian recording artist who is considered by many to be one of the
greatest Indianplayback singers of the Hindi film industry. In his
lifetime, he was awarded the National Film Award, Best National Singer
Award and six Filmfare Awards. In 1967, he was honoured with the Padma
Shri award by the Government of India. His singing career
spanned about 35 years. Rafi is noted for his ability to sing songs of
different moods and varieties: They ranged from classical numbers to
patriotic songs, sad lamentations to highly romantic numbers, qawwalis to ghazals and bhajans.
He is best known for romantic and duet songs and, as a playback
singer, his ability to mould his voice to the persona of the actor lip-synching
the song.
Rafi is primarily noted for his songs in Hindustani, over
which he had a strong command. He sang in other Indian languagesincluding Assamese,Konkani, Bhojpuri, Oriya, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Gujarati, Telugu,
Maghi, Maithili and Urdu. He also recorded a few songs inEnglish, Persian, Spanish and Dutch.
From available figures, Rafi sang 4,516 Hindi film songs, 112 non-Hindi film
songs, and 328 private (non-film) songs from 1945 to 1980.
Mohammed
Rafi was the youngest of six brothers. His father was Hajji Ali Mohammad. The
family lived in Kotla Sultan Singh, a village near present-day Amritsar in Punjab,
India. Rafi, whose nickname was Pheeko, began singing by imitating the
chants of a fakir in his village. Rafi's father moved to Lahore in
the 1920s where he ran a men's salon in Noor Mohalla in Bhatti Gate. His elder
brother, Mohammad Deen, had a friend, Abdul Hameed, (future brother-in-law),
who spotted the talent in Rafi in Lahore and encouraged him to sing. Abdul
Hameed later convinced the family elders to let Rafi move to Mumbai; he
accompanied him in 1944.
Rafi
learnt classical music from Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad
Abdul Wahid Khan, Pandit Jiwan Lal Mattoo and Firoze Nizami. His first
public performance came at the age of 13, when he sang in Lahore
featuring K. L. Saigal. In 1941, Rafi, under Shyam
Sunder, made his debut in Lahore as a playback singer in the duet "Soniye
Nee, Heeriye Nee" with Zeenat Begum in thePunjabi film Gul
Baloch (released in 1944). In that same year, Rafi was invited
by All India Radio Lahore station to sing for them.
He made his professional debut in the Shyam Sunder-directed 1941
Punjabi film Gul Baloch and the earliest debut in a Hindi
film was Gaon Ki Gori in 1945.
On Thursday, 31 July 1980, Rafi died at 10:50 p.m., following
a heart attack. His last song was "Shaam phir kyun udaas hai
dost" (Aas Paas), which he had recorded with Laxmikant-Pyarelalfew
hours before his death.
Rafi was buried at the Juhu Muslim cemetery. It was
one of the biggest funeral processions Mumbai had ever witnessed, with over
10,000 people attending.
In 2010, his tomb was demolished to make space for new burials.
Fans of Mohammed Rafi who visit his tomb twice a year to mark his birth and
death anniversary use the coconut tree nearest to his grave as a marker.
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