Mohammed
Rafi : God’s Own Voice By Raju Korti and Dhirendra Jain
Rating-5/5
I am an avid
listener of Rafi Sahab’s songs. Reading this book was like a blessing bestowed
upon. Composer Naushad once said that every playback singer must have seven
qualities, but Rafi Sahab had the eighth quality which made him the greatest
among all the singers. The seven qualities are-
1 - Good Voice.
2 - Classical Training.
3 - Diction.
4 - Voice Modulation.
5 - Expression
6 - Clarity in Base Voice
7 - Sur (Diapason)
The eighth
quality was that he was a very good man, somewhat like of an Angelic demeanor.
Rafi was
born on December 24th, 1924 in a nondescript hamlet Kotla Sultan
Singh, in a remote rural area of Amritsar, Punjab. Punjab must be proud of the
fact that it gave two singing stars, the first was K. L. Saigal (Kundan Lal
Saigal) and the second, Mohammed Rafi. Rafi’s education was basically confined
to reading and writing Urdu in Persian script. In his childhood, Rafi loved to
graze cattle and to listen Mirasis (A community of Muslims who used to
sing folk songs in semi-classical tone). This was the first inspiration of
singing for him. He practiced it and became the singing star of the village.
Well, he had
never thought to be a singer. To create better living condition for the family,
his father decided to go Lahore, the then capital of Punjab, in 1941. He opened
a dhaba there. After some time, he called Rafi also from the village to
help him in cooking and serving. Now the customers there started to enjoy
Rafi’s singing with good food. One day, Jivan Lal Mattoo, the programme
executive of music at AIR, Lahore passed by the hair cutting saloon and
listened young Rafi’s enchanting voice. He instantly liked it, stopped and
paused for a while then entered in the dhaba. He asked a surprised Rafi
if he was interested in becoming a radio singer. In March 1943, Rafi gave the
audition test at AIR, Lahore and passed it. Now he was a radio artiste. After
six months, an emerging film music director Shyam Sundar requested Rafi to sing
a song, “ Soniye ni, Hiriye ni, Teri Yad ne Sataya” for his Punjabi film
Gul Baloch. He did full justice to the song and it also opened the gates
of playback singing for him.
Rafi moved
from Lahore to Bombay in 1945. After singing some unpopular songs, he got the
big break in Dileep Kumar-Noorjahan starrer Jugnu in 1946. The movie was
a massive hit. When K.L.Saigal died in 18th January, 1947, it also
came like an opportunity to Rafi, because Saigal was like a banyan tree in
singing where no other singer could grow to potential under his shadow. Till
the Independence, Rafi was a house-hold name in the country. Many muslim
singers went Pakistan during the partition, but Rafi decided to live in India.
It was
composer Pandit HusnLal-BhagatRam who started to groom Rafi in early 1948 for
the playback singing along with Suraiya. Later when Lata Mangeshkar came in
their contact, they preferred Lata over Suraiya. The songs, “ Ik Dil Ke
Tukde Hazar Hue, Koi Yaha Gira Koi Waha Gira” and, “ Suno Suno Ae Duniyawalo
Bapu Ki Ye Amar Kahani” made Rafi famous in the whole Indian Subcontinent.
The rest is the history.
Rafi sang for 243 music directors almost.
Either a virtuoso or a newcomer, every music director was his Master. He called
his music directors “Master Ji”. The book is full of his benevolent anecdotes
when he often helped new music directors to establish in the industry. In fact,
it was said in his prime time that Rafi was like a ladder for music directors.
The main music-directors are:
Laxmikant-PyareLal, Shankar-JaiKishan. Ramchandra Chitalkar (C.
Ramchandra), Ravi Shankar Sharma (aka Ravi), O.P.Naiyyar, S.D.Burman,
Chitragupt (Shrivastav), Naushad, Khayyam (aka Sharma Ji) etc.
Rafi sang
the songs of 310 lyricists almost. A few big names are- Majrooh Sultanpuri (aka
Asrar Hussain Khan), Anand Bakshi, Rajendra Krishn, Hasrat Jaipuri (aka Iqbal
Hussain), Prem Dhawan, Qamar Jalalabadi, Sahir Ludhiyanwi, Shakeel Badayuni
etc.
Rafi sang
with 47 male and 80 female singers. And, the highest number of duets (799) is
with Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar comes on the second number (413), Suman
Kalyanpur is on the third number (142), according to this biography. Many still
believe that Rafi sang highest numbers of duets with Lata, but this is a myth.
The truth is that in the beginning of 1960 Lata raised the issue of royalty and
she expected that Rafi would support her. But Rafi said, “when the producer
pays the fee the singer demand for a song, thereafter the singer shouldn’t have
a share in the royalty.” And thus, they did not work for many years. In this
phase, Rafi sang with Suman Kalyanpur and Lata with Mahendra Kapoor. Well, it
was Lata who decided not to sing with Rafi. Like always Rafi was at his best
and in demand, but this cold-war perturbed the composers who wanted the duets
of Rafi & Lata. For this purpose, composers chose Suman Kalyanpur who
uncannily sounded like Lata. This made Lata somewhat disturbed who saw that her
piece of cake was serving to another singer. Finally she approached JaiKishan
for a patch up with Rafi. It came during the making of Dev Anand starrer Jewel
Thief (1967) which lyrics that seemed the tailor-made for this situation,
the long-lost reunion was made melodious with “Dil Pukare, Aare Aare.”
In actors,
he sang highest numbers of songs for Shammi Kapoor (170), Johny
Walker(Badruddin Jamaluddin Qazi) stands on the second number(136)-it’s
somewhat strange and unique for Rafi as Walker was not a Hero, but a Comedian,
Shashi Kapoor comes on the third number (120). It was the uniqueness of Rafi
that he could sing for any actor.
After the royalty feud between Lata and Rafi,
relationship between them seldom got the same intensity and affinity. In the
mid of 1977, Rafi dashed off a letter to the Guinness Book of Wold Records
challenging Lata’s claims that she has recorded the maximum number of songs.
The book mentioned that Lata had sung ‘Not less than 25000 songs’ while Rafi in
an interview told the BBC that he had sung 25000-26000 songs almost. Well,
Rafi’s challenge was unheeded by the Guinness Book of World Record. Later after
his death, in iits 1984 edition, the book gave Lata Mangeshkar’s name for the
“most recodings” and stated, “Mohammed Rafi (dated August 1, 1980) claimed to
have recorded 28000 songs in 11 Indian languages between 1944 and April 1980”.
The fact is both these claims are highly exaggerated, because it was physically
impossible to sing over a thousand songs in a year while doing rehearsals and
holding domestic and overseas shows at the same time. There is still no clear
record on exactly how many songs Rafi has sung- though not as ridiculously high
as 28000- it was somewhere close to 10000 since there were many songs which had
been recorded but not included in films or recorded but no one knows what
happened to them. However, even with this possibility taken into account the
number can’t go beyond 7000 in any case. When the sources at Guinness found
themselves wrong, the Rafi and Lata entries were removed in 1991. And, in 2001,
it gave the honor to Asha Bhosle. Sometimes, all is not well that ends well.
The Lata-Rafi cold war is a case in point.
The movie
Aradhna (1969) starring Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore is considered to
cause eclipse of mighty Mohammed Rafi, but after exploring a little, the
authors have given their insights that when Aradhna came S.D. Burman’s way, his
thoughts were clear that it would be Rafi who would sing for Rajesh Khanna,
even the first two duets were recorded in Rafi’s voice- ‘Gunguna Rahe Hai Bhawre’
and ‘Bagho me Bahar hai’, but everything went wrong when Burman Dada fell ill
and he had to hand over the baton to Pancham Da (R.D. Burman), his son. Even
critics swear that Burman Dada had started rehearsal for ‘Roop Tera Mastana’
and ‘Mere Sapno Ki Rani Kab Aayegi Tu’ with Rafi, but after his illness when
Pancham Da got the responsibility, he brought his favorite- Kishore Kumar
(Aabhas Kumar Ganguly). As it turned out, Aradhna gave a carreer-boost to many
persons associated with it, especially Kishore Da and Rajesh Khanna. For the
next seven years, it was Kishore Da who stole all the limelight. Still, if one
thinks that Rafi was left behind in this phase- it’s just a myth. Rafi sang a
lot of melodious songs in this phase and in 1977 even got a Filmfare award
again for the best male singer for ‘Kya Hua Tera Vada’. When Kishore Da was at
peak in his career, Rafi sang some best numbers like , ‘Tum Mujhe Yu Bhula Na
Paoge’, ‘Ye Duniya Ye Mehfil Mere Kaam Ki Nahi’, ‘Ye Jo Chilman Hai’, ‘Chadhti
Jawani’, ‘Chalo Dildar Chalo’, ‘Aaj Mausam Bada Beiman Hai’, ‘Teri Galiyo Me Na
Rakhenge Kadam (Hawas, 1974)’, for this song he won the Film World Magazine
Best Singer Award, it was composed by Usha Khanna, and the list is limitless.
Whatever the situation and rumors were, Kishore Da and Rafi had never any
rivalry. Kishore Da respected Rafi Sahab a lot, considered him as his big
brother, and himself was a great fan of Rafi’s singing. There were two photos
in Kishore Da’s room, one was of K.L. Saigal and the second was of Mohammed
Rafi.
Mohammed
Rafi always abstained from limelight. He was not a party-person. He didn’t even
watch the movies he sang in. Sholey was an exception in this sense, though he
didn’t sing any song in it, he watched it many times. He was a huge fan of
Amitabh Bachchan and Big B was his at that time. His world revolves around his
recordings and his family. He was an angel in human form. The book is full of
his benevolent activities.
The book is
published from Niyogi Books. Both the writers have done extensive research and
interviewed many living famous persons competently for collecting and compiling
the facts. The book is written in a very easy language. It comprises 40 small
chapters. There are many illustrations (Pictures of Mohd. Rafi, his home,
belongings, awards, meeting with eminent personalities and family). For a
Mohammed Rafi fan, this book is a must read.
In this
book, it is mentioned that there are such fans of Rafi who worships him like a
God. They have collected every possible thing related to Rafi. Even the writers
had to go to such fans for their research. Like others fans, I am also of the
view that Mohammed Rafi must be given Bharat Ratna posthumously. If Lata
Mangeshkar and M.S. Subbulakshmi can get Bharat Ratna, why not Mohammed Rafi?
Well, I
haven’t any huge collection of Rafi’s songs, but I think I have listened him a
lot. I would like to mention my top ten songs sung by Rafi which are timeless
and I never get tired of listening them again and again (There are innumerable
in this category though).
1- Tum Mujhe Yu Bhula Na Paoge
2- Mere Dushman Tu Meri Dosti Ko Tarse
3- Ehsaan Tera Hoga Mujh Par
4- Ye Chand Sa Roshan Chehra
5- Badan Pe Sitare Lapete Hue
6- Mai Jindagi Ka Sath Nibhata Chalata
Gaya
7- Mujhe Ishq Hai Tujhi Se
8- Parda Hai Parda
9- Kya Hua Tera Wada
10-Aaja Tujhko Pukare Mere Geet Re
Now, at the last I would like to write four lines-
“Mohabbat Ki Ye
Inteha Ho Gyi
Ki Masti Me Tumko
Khuda Kah Gaya
Jamana Ye Insaaf
Karta Rahe
Bura Kah Gaya Ya
Bhala Kah Gaya”
Comments
Post a Comment