BY A.S. MURTY (asmurty2@rediffmail.com)
Since the time the Rafi Foundation got going at Mumbai, followed by its Delhi Chapter’s birth, we at Hyderabad were mulling over the idea of forming the Hyderabad Chapter. Likeminded persons got to know one another through the pages of www.mohdrafi.com and also names of probable contacts were forwarded to us from Mumbai and Bangalore. It was by chance that I got to know first Mr. P. Narayanan from Bangalore on the website.
I had all along known only the songs of Rafi Sahab and was influenced since my own childhood by the uniqueness of this legendary singer. While I liked any good composition with good lyrics rendered in a class of its own by any singer, Rafi Sahab scored over the rest by his clarity, diction, softness and full of zeal and emotion in his songs. Such was the impact of his rendition that I had never the difficulty in understanding the mood of the song. Rafi Sahab conveyed it all through his voice. One need not see the movie from which a song was rendered. There it was for the entire world to relish the efforts put in by the producers, the directors, the story writers, the lyricists, the music directors and above all the actors. The entire picture is before our eyes – only the singer had to be Rafi Sahab. (more…)