Mohammed Rafi

Mohammed Rafi was an Indian playback singer and musician who is considered to have been one of the greatest and most influential singers of the Indian subcontinent. He was born in a Punjabi Jat Muslim family in Kotla Sultan Singh, a village near present-day Majitha in Amritsar district of Punjab, India, on 24 December 1924. He was the second eldest of six brothers. He started singing by imitating the chants of a fakir who roamed the streets of his village. His father moved to Lahore in 1935, where he ran a men's barbershop. Rafi learnt classical music from Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan, Pandit Jiwan Lal Mattoo and Firoze Nizami. He made his debut as a playback singer in the duet "Soniye Nee, Heeriye Nee" with Zeenat Begum in the Punjabi film Gul Baloch (released in 1944) under music director Shyam Sunder. He moved to Mumbai in 1944 and sang for many Hindi films. He was notable for his versatility and range of voice; his songs varied from fast peppy numbers to patriotic songs, sad numbers to highly romantic songs, qawwalis to ghazals and bhajans to classical songs. He was known for his ability to mould his voice to the persona and style of the actor lip-syncing the song on screen in the movie. He received six Filmfare Awards and one National Film Award. In 1967, he was honoured with the Padma Shri award by the Government of India. He recorded songs for over a thousand Hindi films and in many Indian languages as well as some foreign languages, though primarily in Urdu and Punjabi, over which he had a strong command. He recorded as many as 7,000 songs throughout his career, spanning several languages and dialects such as Konkani, Assamese, Bhojpuri, Odia, Bengali, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Magahi, Maithili, etc. He also sang in some foreign languages, including English, Farsi, Arabic, Sinhala, Mauritian Creole, and Dutch. He died of a heart attack in Mumbai on 31 July 1980, at the age of 55. He was buried at the Juhu Muslim cemetery. His funeral procession was attended by over 10,000 people. He left behind a legacy of music and joy.