Spice of Life | At 100, Rafi’s golden voice remains young
It’s been 44 years since his death in 1980 yet Rafi’s songs are just as popular and most frequently heard over the Vividh Bharati Service of Akashvani Mumbai and All India Radio’s Urdu Service from New Delhi
Born on Christmas Eve in 1924, Mohammed Rafi would have turned 100 this year. His birthplace, Kotla Sultan Singh, in Amritsar district was like any other village of Punjab’s Majha region. Its residents reared cattle and like any other child his age, young Rafi, nicknamed Phiko, would take the neighbour’s cattle to graze after school, humming folk songs.
In 1942, Phiko joined his father, Haji Mohammad Ali, who ran a dhaba in Lahore. He found a job at a hairdresser’s saloon. While attending to customers, Rafi could not resist singing Waris Shah’s Heer and Piloo’s Mirza. His sweet voice attracted new customers. Someone visiting the studios of All India Radio, Lahore, told the story of Rafi’s melodious voice to the local AIR head, Jiwan Lal Mattoo. One day, Mattoo went to the barber shop and heard the young man’s voice for himself. Impressed, he called Rafi for an audition. Approved as a folk singer in Punjabi, Rafi was told to report to Mattoo’s second-in-command Budh Singh Taan.
Taan honed Rafi’s talent. In no time, his voice reached the film studios of Lahore and a new music director, Shyam Sunder, got a Punjabi song recorded in Rafi’s voice for the film, Gul Baloch. The film flopped, but Rafi’s passion took him to Ustad Barqat Ali Khan, the younger brother of the legendary Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, in Lahore. Rafi mastered the subtleties of ‘khayal’ and ‘thumri’, and thought of trying his luck with playback singing in Bombay.
He took a train to the city of dreams in late 1944. But, a long struggle lay ahead. In 1949, Rafi got his first break when Sajjad Hussain, a perfectionist music director, made him sing Heer Waris Shah. The song was an instant hit.
In playback singing, his earliest mentor was Pandit Husan Lal. A Punjabi himself, he would call Rafi to his house as early as 4am with his ‘tanpura’ and rehearse for hours prior to the actual recording. Shyam Sunder mentored Rafi for his duets with Lata Mangeshkar in the film, Bazaar (1949).
Music director Feroze Nizami had Rafi go through repeated rehearsals for singing his first duet with Noorjehan for Jugnu. The duet, “Yahan badla wafa ka bewafai ke siwa kya hai”, became a superhit. On the bloody partition of Punjab in 1947, Rafi rendered an emotional song, “Ik dil ke tukde hazaar hue koi yahan gira koi wahan gira”. On the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, he rendered another soul-stirring song, “Suno suno aye duniya walo Bapu ki yeh amar kahani”. The tunes for both the songs were composed by the duo of Husan Lal and Bhagat Ram.
Naushad Ali, a music composer from Uttar Pradesh, took Rafi’s voice to the zenith. Some of Naushad’s timeless creations in Rafi’s voice include “Yeh zindagi ke mele duniya mein kam na honge afsos hum na honge” ( Mela, 1948); “Suhani raat dhal chuki na jaane tum kab aaoge” (Dulari, 1949); “Hue hum jinke liye barbaad” and “Meri kahani bhoolne waale” (Deedar, 1951); “O duniya ke rakhwale” (Baiju Bawra, 1952); and “Insaaf ka mandir hai yeh bhagwan ka ghar hai” (Amar, 1954).
Rafi became the favourite of all Punjabi music directors, including Madan Mohan, Hans Raj Behl, Shyam Sunder, Alla Rakha Quraishi, Khayyam, OP Nayyar, S Mohinder and Sardul Singh Kwatra.
It’s been 44 years since his death in 1980 yet Rafi’s songs are just as popular and are most frequently heard over the Vividh Bharati Service of Akashvani Mumbai and All India Radio’s Urdu Service from New Delhi. His fans in Mumbai and Amritsar are even planning to build a memorial in honour of the golden voice of the silver screen.
harjapaujla@gmail.com
The writer is a Mohali-based freelance contributor
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