Mohammed Rafi Biography and Works.

Born on December 24, 1924, Mohammed Rafi was an Indian playback singer whose career spanned over four decades.

He made his singing debut in the Punjabi film, Gul baloch by rendering a duet with Zeenat Begum, ‘Soniye Ni Heeriye Ni’ composed by Shyamsunder.

Rafi has sung as many as 4,516 Hindi film songs, 112 non-Hindi film songs and 328 non-film songs from 1945 to 1980. Having a strong command over Hindu and Urdu, his songs ranged from classical numbers sad lamentations to highly romantic numbers, to patriotic songs, qawwalis to ghazals and bhajans.

While he was primarily noted for his Hindi-Urdu songs, he also sang in other Indian languages including Bhojpuri, Konkani, Oriya, Bengali, Punjabi, Sindhi, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati, Telugu, Maithili, Assamese, etc.

He had been conferred with many awards for his contributions to the industry including a National Award and many Filmfare Awards. He was also honoured with the Padma Shri in 1967.

Best known for romantic and duet songs, he had sung most of his songs with famous singer, Asha Bhosle.

Some of the notable Films he sang for are Aar Paar, Baiju Bawra, Barsat Ki Raat, Ek Musafir Ek Haseena, Dosti, Hum Dono, Teesri Manzil, Pyasa, Shaheed. He died on July 31, 1980, after he suffered a heart attack.

Trivia

His birth name was Mohammed Haji Ali Mohammed Rafi. An article in Times of India’, published on July 24, 2010 sums up his voice as, “If there are 101 ways of saying, ‘I love you’ in a song, Mohammed Rafi knew them all”.