In my opinion there was no playback singer as sweet, melodious, expressive and versatile as Mohammed Rafi.
It was not any exaggeration if I say that some time back in 1962 when I heard the song “Jo wada kiya vo nibhana padega..” rendered by Md. Rafi from Taj Mahal, I started humming and singing that song with my own words as I did not have any knowledge of Hindi language. It happened when I was 12 years old boy studying in a school located in a small town in Andhra Pradesh having a population of nearly one lakh, I studied Hindi language only from class sixth to eighth. Our way of teaching and examination was only to learn alphabets and few simple words. In our examination our pass mark was only 15 but because we used to repeat same answers to fill up number of pages and some time some of the boys used to write questions from the question papers from bottom to top or write some Telugu film song in whatever Hindi alphabets they knew. Our teachers never used to read what we had written, instead they use to award marks on how many pages we filled with Hindi alphabets. It was at that stage I used to hum that particular song again and again. For Md. Rafi’s songs I happened to see that movie at least a dozen times. Of course the theater where the movie ran more than 100 days was just very close to our house from where we could hear Taj Mahal songs clearly in the night.
His vocal gems like “ye mera prem patr padh kar ke tum na raaj na hona “from Sangam was just one example of Rafi’s phonetic expression of each and every word of the lyric as clear as distilled water and as melodious as fragrance of a jasmine flower. His voice swings like tingling of bells when Rafi rendered some of the melodies and flowers nodding their heads when a cool breeze touched them. “ my jindagi ka saath nibhata chalagaya” from film Hum Dono.
The way he used to live in the character and sang the song was spellbound which you would appreciate from the songs “ Baabul ki duvaye leti jaa …” from film Neelkamal, “din dhal jaye hai rath na jaaye..” from Guide, “Koi sagar dil ko behalata nahi” from dil diya Dard liya, “Toothe huve khwabone hum ko ye sikhaya hai..” from Madhumati. Of course it would take countless pages if I start quoting his thousands of melodies from thousands of Hindi films of yester years.
Beyond doubt one and only Rafi could bridge the gap between the classical 'Oh duniyake rakh wale sun dard bhare mere naale' from film Baiju bhawara and the scintillating rock and roll 'oh haseena julfowali jane jaha' in Teesri manjil.
What a variety of songs came out of his sweet voice in those days.
‘Baharon phool bhras avo…’ when you close your eyes and listen to that song you will definitely feel that in a garden where showers of flower petals flowers are slowly decending from the branches of trees.
There are countless vocalgems of the great playback singer since 1944 till his death in July 1981
Rafi used to have so much fan following from all age groups and from all regions of India including the regions where Hindi language was not liked at all. He commanded respect and appreciation from the very popular and eminent personalities from music world.
The queen of melodies Lata Mangeshkar said about Rafi “Wo har trah ki gaana is khulise gate hai, gana na samajh ne vale bhi wah wah kar the hai, aisa gayak bar bar janam nahi lete”
The Ghajal King Jagjit singh said “Rafi sab ki awaj har personality me fit bait the hai. Unki gajal kya ghajal the.
Mahendra Kapoor was inspired by Mohammad Rafi’s mesmerizing voice and treated him as his Guru. ‘Bachpan se manthatha Rafi saheb mera guru. Unke kai gane ache lagte the’
His magic and perfect voice rendered many hit ghajals, kawwalis, bhajans, romantic, tragic, comedy, lovelorn, patriotic, folk and many more songs fit to the character and situation. In nineteen fifties and sixties most of the title songs of bollywood movies were sung by the great Md.Rafi.
Many noted personalities from film world said that he was not having any Guru or formal training from where he learnt his basics of classical music. If it were true means Rafi was a born Singer. He sang many versatile compositions from very popular music directors like Naushad, S.D. Burman, Sankhar-jaikishan, sriramchandra, O.P. Nayyar, Madan Mohan, Roshan, S.N.Tripathi, Ushakhanna, Salil chaudhury, Khayyam, Jaidev, Chitragupt, R.D.Burman, Ravi, Laxmikanth-pyarelal, to name a few to many unknown musicians who earned fame because of Immortal voice of one and only Mohammad Rafi.
It was not out of place if I said that there were several films in which all songs rendered by Rafi became hits. Almost two decades his songs commanded the top place like “Sartaj geet” in Binaca geetmala which was a radio broad cast from Srilanka in those days. To cite a few
Cha hoong mai thuje sanj savere.., Rahi manuva dhuk ki chinta kyo satati hai.., Mera tu job hi kadam hai who tere raha me hai.., Koyi jab raahana paye mere sang…, all these vocal gems were hits from Dosti.
It was a well known fact that Laxikanth-pyrelal’s carrier was made because of the hit songs rendered by the great Rafi sahib for Dosti which not only won a film fare award for Rafi for the hit song Rahi manuva dhuk ki chinta kyo satati hai but also also to LK-PL.
The very strange thing was that in the movie Dosti, it was initially planned to get all songs of that movie sung by Lata Mangeshkar but due to Lata’s modesty and good suggestion male songs were recorded with Rafi’s voice. It made history by winning Rafi and LK-PL Film fare and national awards.
Though between 1940 to 1980 many good singers, contemporaries to Md. Rafi, existed but each one was branded as a particular type of singing fit to a particular actor or only to specific situation. To give examples Mukhesh became synonym to Raj kapoor , Mahendra Kapoor to Manoj kumar and Kishore Kumar to Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna and Amitab bachhan.
During sixties due to a couple of hits given by Kishore Kumar in Devanad film Teen deviyan and some other films, there was a talk in those days that Kishore Kumar became the singing voice of Dev Anand but in realty Dev Anand had more hits from Rafi sahib in his own banner Navketan than Kishore da did.
Among many stalwarts in playback singingin Bollywood at that time Rafi was every ones voice of yester years film heroes namely Bharat Bhushan, Pradeep Kumar, Dilip kumar, Dev Anand, Rajaendra Kumar, Dharmendar, Raj kumar, Sunil Dutt, Shammi Kapoor, Sashi Kapoor, Joy mukherji, Jitender, Rishi Kappr, popular comedians like Jhony walker, Jagdeep, Mehmood, and many known and unpopular actors of Bollywood.
His many thousands of melodious duets with Geeta Dutt, Asha Bhosle, Suman Kalyan Puri and Lata Mangeshkar became extremely popular.
