Did R.D.Burman really preferred KK over Rafi?
This article is written by Mr.H.V.Guru Murthy.
A regular browser to web site mohdrafi.com, having gone through the letters of Rafi lovers would assume that R D Burman did not utilize Rafi properly, instead he preferred Kishore Kumar. Because of this reason, Rafi Fans are still upset with RDB even though he passed away a decade back.
Yes, it is true that RDB preferred KK over Rafi during early seventies. For that matter, which Music Director or Actor or Producer or Director will not have his preference. It was well known that Raj Kapoor always preferred Mukesh, Manoj Kumar preferred Mukesh or Mahendra Kapoor, B.R.Chopra films had Mahendra, MD Ravi also had plenty of songs with Mahendra so also O.P after he broke with Rafi. Similarly OP always had either Asha or Geetha Dutt and never Lata. Salil also used all other Singers. Director Subba Rao insisted on Mukesh for SAATHI even though the hero was Rajendra Kumar and MD Naushad, two Rafi Fans. Even Kalyanji Anandji had many films with Mahendra Kapoor, Mukesh and KK even though Rafi was instrumental in their raise through JAB JAB PHOOL KHILE, AAMNE SAAMNE, etc. LP, by all means Rafi Bhakts, used KK regularly in the early seventies even for Rafi heroes like Jeetendra, Dharmendra, etc. SJ also switched over to KK in movies like MAIN SUNDAR HOON, DIL DAULAT DUNIYA, KAL AAJ AUR KAL, etc. Of course, the music standard came down a notch or two in that period. But, well, it is their prerogative to have whomsoever they wanted though I am sure in heart of heart, why even openly, they would have admitted the superiority of Rafi over all other Singers. Similarly, RDB also used KK for almost all his movies in the early seventies as perhaps he had some special chemistry with him.
However, let us not forget that RDB used Rafi extensively during late sixties as his main playback singer right from the first movie. He gave hit music with Rafi in TEESRI MANZIL, NAQLI NAWAAB, CARAVAN, PYAAR KA MAUSAM, THE TRAIN, ABHILASHA, ADHIKAR, RATON KA RAAJA, etc. Later during late seventies he returned to Rafi and gave hits like SHAAN, HUM KISISE KUM NAHIN, ABDULLAH, ZAMANE KO DIKHANA HAI, etc. In between, he had Rafi in CHANDI SONA qawali with Mannadey (Ek Shok Hasina Se), YADON KI BAARAT (Title song and who can forget the duet with Asha Chura Liya Hai Tumne), DIL KA BAADSHAH (this Raj Kumar starrer had all songs by Rafi), THE GREAT GAMBLER (Raftasa Mera Naam), SHEHZADA (Solo Tere Attaroo and duet with Lata Kaahe Ko Bulaya), etc.
If a person cannot appreciate the greatness of Rafi, then it can be safely concluded that the person does not have a sense of music. Of course, RDB was a good MD though not a great MD like Naushad, Madan Mohan, OP Nayyar, SDB, etc. RD would have definitely known the great qualities of Rafi, the Singer. Just because he did not use Rafi extensively as one would expect, let us not degrade this MD who gave us some good songs in CHANDAN KA PALNA, PADOSAN, HARE RAMA HARE KRISHNA, MERE JEEVAN SAATHI, AJNABEE, AMAR PREM, SANAM TERI KASAM, BHOOT BANGLA, BAHARON KE SAPNE (Rafi solo Zamane Ne Maare), PARICHAY, KINAARA, APNA DESH, ZAHREELA INSAAN, RAMPUR KA LAKSHAMAN (Pyaar Ka Samay with Lata, KK and Rafi), 1942 – A LOVE STORY, KATI PATANG to certain extent, etc. though he gave some very mediocre music in films like DEEWAR, SHOLAY, KITAAB, ZAKHMEE, RAFOO CHAKKAR, NAMKEEN, DHARAM KARAM and BIWI O BIWI (so un-RK film like), etc. so many forgettable movies as for as music was concerned.
The irony of RDB was either he gave good music or petered out to a very mediocre music in so many films. I read some where that Shashi Kapoor called RD as National Anthem Music Director. In those days, theatres used to play National Anthem at the end of the movie and the Hall doors used to be shut till the completion of the Anthem. As soon as the Anthem used to commence, our in-disciplined people used to rush to the Hall Door and wait for the door opening. Similarly, whenever RDB songs commenced in most of the movies, people used to rush to toilet.
Still, it is not fair that we use harsh and sometimes, un-parliamentary language against any body if they differ with our views. We cannot forget the contribution of all these MDs, Heroes, Singers, Directors, etc. in making the Indian Film Music so rich.
July 20th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Hi to all rafi fans, as every body knows,Mehmood had approached S.D Barman for the music of his first movie Chhotte Nawab,with a blank cheque.Now Dada Barman was not inclined towards it,but when Mehmood insisted,he was guided to R.D Barman.And what great music R.D.B gave for the movie.In this movie, Mehmood is shown as an adult,but with the brain of a child.The first song is picturised on Mehmood and some kids.Rafi sahab has sung the song so well that each and every word is crystal clear. Now when we come to the 2′nd song, it has been picturised on Mehmood , with his father on death bed.The song is something like this “Ilahi tu sun le hamali [hamari] dua, salamat rahe saaya maa-baap ka” it has been rendered so beautifully by rafi sahab and the music composed so well.Has any body heard the song?Mr Haldar I request you to please hear it and then compare the best KK song of R.D.B with it. regards, ASHISH KAPOOR ashkpr@hotmail.com
July 20th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Friends,
The discussion seems to have currently steered itself to whether RDB is a great Music Director or not. My unequivocal answer is: NO.
And it is not because what he did or didn’t in favor of or against Rafi Saab. But, simply based on the quality of his music, not all of which was his own, in any case! Many of his ‘mediocre hit’ songs are credited to Usha Uthup’s knowledge of Spanish, Angolan and Peruvian songs!
And, friends, some lofty issues such as ‘quality of music’, etc. cannot be democratically decided! Else, Shan and Adnan Sani will be the best singers of all times!
RDB just finds no place among stalwarts and great MDs such as his own father, SDB, Naushad, SJ, Madan Mohan, Roshan, RAvi, OPN (his love-rival?) or even Khayyam, Iqbal Quereshi, N.Datta and others.
His best work (and the one that I like) came only 1.when he was humbly assisting his father and 2.during his first 3 or 4 films such as Chote Nawab, Teesri Manzil. The moment the little success went to his head and he started thinking he knows more than his father, his music has plummetted to mediocrity.
Venkat
July 20th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Rafi fans : a documentary of 2 hours : a labour of love by a rafi
fan in delhi is made and I want to meet him. pls. see post 120 in
king of mel o d y and know how some stalwarts of the rafi era
behave to day after enjoying success from rafi songs.
I want to meet this documentary maker urgently and please help
me in doing so.
binu nair mumbai the rafi foundation : cell : 09833250 701.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Haldar ji:
wihout malice i would venture out to say that Rajesh Khanna-r.d.b.
were the archit e c ts in changing the wave in fovour of Kishore
in the 70″s.
A notable feature u would agree is that in this era even second grade
songs of Kishore were passed off as great hits and the farishtas classy
songs were drubbed as “near flops”.
Vested interests were simultaneously working overtime and broad-
casting that rafis days are over. It was painful years for rafi fans
like us in our college days to see rafi being run down. What we did
then : go to rafis live shows when possible, see the films that had
rafi songs and generally forget about music since the din of the
bongos were painful to the ears.
the sound of dholaks from l & P and the occassional K &A rafi numbers
were the only soothing things for the ears. A special mention of :
apni aanknon mein basakar , koye ikraar karoon here; a hit of those
years comes to the mind.
On July 29 the lady doctor fan of u l h a s nagar is singing this song
on stage as her tribute to rafi saab on his 27th anniversary : her
singing at the rehearsals left me spellbound as the words suits rafi
saab to the letter t in capitals. M y compliments to the doctor family
a h u jas and his rafi fan club team of ulhas n a g a r.
I am not surprised by the flow of response on this topic: it”s an outlet
of anger against the mean minded people of the industry who played
games against rafi saab. Second being the love towards rafi saab and
against the injustice done to a farishta.
The views are quite balanced and nothing personal : haldarji I subscribe
to most of ur views and I look forward to ur article for sar g a m
which is on a aug15 release.
Rafi lovers : the rafi foundation work is being highlighted by the
media and ur views and suppor is welc o m e and anticipated.
binu nair the rafi foundation mumbai : binus2000@hotmail.com
July 20th, 2007 at 4:27 am
Mr Guru Murthi’s article has invited lots of response from hard core Rafi fans and self proclaimed analysts. Some like our regular contibutor on rafi forum Mr Haldar are hell bent on trying to claim that RD Burman was so great that he only sidelined great Rafi saheb between 1970 and 1976.
I request Haldar(s) to please read the article again. Nowhere has Mr Murthy claimed that RD Burman was that great. Although the media, remix industry, Mrs RD Burman (aka Asha Bhonsle) and hard core RDB fans want to call this very good MD to be great (if not greatest). It has been stated umpteen times that Kishores/Rajesh Khanna’s rise, Rafi’s absence and sudden shift in music style changed it all. But to say that it was RDB and RDB only who brought Kishore Kumar up at Rafi Saheb’s expense. Even SJ, LP and KA switched to Kishore da for commercial reasons - how can anyone fault them from going with the stream that flowed and it was Kishore da who ruled, the way Rafi Saheb had ruled between 52 and 70. Rafi saheb was perhaps naive, too simple, gentleman and God fearing. Kishore da was reasonable educated, very smart and clever to cash in and dictate.
Without malice, can someone give me the number of movies RDB gave music to during his career and his career graph.
I hope I have not antagonized Mr Haldar, if so, it is unintentenal.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:59 am
Hi P. Haldar,
I fully agree with you, the same Shakti who had musical hits thanks to Rafi saab, forgot about all that and listened to Pancham. The funny thing is that shakti mentioned in an interview that they had all wanted Rafi for KP but he was out of town. However going by what you mentioned, maybe the “all” didn’t include Pancham, and the Pancham influence had crept in just like it did with Dev Anand and his Pancham scores. For all the music Pancham made with Dev, it never matched up to what SD scored with Dev vis a vis Rafi. Pancham may have tried hard to sideline Rafi but in the end it came back to haunt him, and Rafi emerged the winner as always.
Coming back to the point about MD’s also giving Kishore songs, it had a lot to do with producer influence as well, I mentioned this in my previous post, as did Manish in his post. Kishore’s peak periods were simply a trend, that’s all.
Now a question to you, if Aradhana had not happened, what do you think RD would have done in that case ?.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:00 am
btw…for all the lata & asha bashing we do lol, my question is this: why did lata mangeshkar serve as MENTOR to LP? when one was nothing but a drummer - she was impressed and mentored them. even sang songs at very reduced rates for these unknown singers and mohd rafi characteristically was happy to do the same. GREAT discovery by lata IMO. that was a VERY kind thing to do - and it really helped out rafi and music lovers too!
can someone explain why she was so nice here? she had little to gain herself as any md would love her and give her songs (although it did help her).
July 19th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
1. I’d like an explanation from the late SDB as to why he didn’t try to “save” Rafi in the 70s. Is it because he was too old and sick and his son was doing the tricks or he didn’t care or he yielded to the Kishore-Rajesh Khanna wave?
2. If you guys have seen Abhimaan then you know the story. After “Tere Bindya Re” the charactors “realize” that the female voice is so much better than the male voice (I didn’t think so). Do you think this was SDB’s attempt to say “Well, we can’t use Kishore becuase he’s just too good - let’s use Rafi so that Lata can beat him in the song as the movie dictates”. This is the ONLY Rafi song in the movie. Or maybe SDB genuinely thought this one suit Rafi best and the others Kishore (but if he was this fair to Rafi - then why not in other movies of the 70s?). I do hear Kishore asked the Burmans to go to Rafi with this one - as it suited him better. Any thoughts.
3. I would kill to hear Mere Sapano Ki Rani from Aradhana and Yeh Dosti from Sholay in the voice of Mohammed Rafi. His version would be sweeter, smoother, and more melodious. I’d also kill to hear happy versions of Jaikishan’s Zindagi Ek Safar Hai Suhana. If I could get these songs in Rafi’s voice - I’d be willing to forgive RDB for what he did - help his friend. I do agree with P Haldar’s reasoning - some of you guys talks as if he isn’t a fan just because he chooses to be reasonable.
4. LP’s music was generally more melodious than RDB’s IMO (but this is maybe a Rafi vs Kishore melody battle). Part of setting the trend, RDB amplified the bringing in of western music and of Kishore Kumar - that is not necessarily a “better” thing to do than to stick with Rafi - which is what LP did. It is trend setting though. Within India, I do think LP proved superior to LP because they also produced IMMORTAL gems (just as good as RDB’s if not better). Further, they did this as early as 1964 and continued to rule till 1998 with Juhi Chawla, Anil Kapoor, Govinda’s Deewana Mastana with great music sung by Alka Yagnik. I LOVE LP - you can’t overlook that consistency of GREATNESS (the amplitude was there too - granted I’d rather have short brilliance than long mediocrity but LP was BRILLIANT too!) and you have to ask yourself why Lata Mangeshkar sang the most number of songs for these guys! RDB gave lots of bad music too! and he wasn’t doing so well in the 1980s - LP was beating him despite him having his best singer and LP taking a big blow with the loss of Rafi!
5. Can someone explain why RDB is, and without exaggeration, 10 times more popular (and it hurts me to do this) SJ + SDB + LP + OPN + Naushad combined among the youth or sites like HamaraCD (where more younger people go to probably). Clearly, those other MDs were just as good if not incomparably superior. The young people liking it is more due to RECENCY affect of the Rajesh - Amitabh - RDB - Kishore wave (COMBINED EFFORT - take out ANY one of these 4 and you’ve got a problem) and that is why. 100 years from now - we’ll see what really happens. Thoughts?
Feel free to elaborate.
July 19th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
ref post 81:
myk, thanks so much for the actual figures. Based on what venkatji said, they could be even higher. Please take a careful look at the figures you yourself have presented and you’ll find the turning point remains the same. Also, the numbers start falling from 1972 onwards till they reach the lowest point in 1976. Kati Patang was released in 1970 and Amar Prem in 1971. If Shakti had made the phone call, the badshah would have come for sure. Aasman se farishta aa sakte, to london se zaroor aate. But shakti didn’t because pancham was by his side. The same pancham who took his father’s tunes created for Rafi in Aradhana and handed them over to Kishore. The same pancham who had earlier embellished the “tum bin jawoon kahan” with Kishore’s yodeling. Rafi wasn’t too happy when his neighbour Manna was beating him regularly in kites. But if he knew that his musical patang was being cut by another Bengali, he would have surely returned home. By the time he returned, the damage had been done.
July 19th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Hi All
These are really good posts that you have posted here and keep up the good work.
I am a Rafi saab fan and I just wanted to share this to everybody even though some may say that I am stupid to be posting this here but I want to share this whatever anyone thinks.
I had a dream about Rafi saab on Sunday last week and I saw the legend sat on a sofa with other people who I did not recognise and they were singing songs and I was stood in the next room of this house which I dont know where it was or whose house it was but I could see everybody sat down and singing and then the legend that is Rafi saab started singing and I could see him in flesh singing something which I could not make out and I started saying to myelf “there is Rafi saab singing”.
I dont know why I had this dream but I am so happy that I did, is it because his death anniverasry is also approcahing I dont know but to have seen him in my dream like that as if he were alive and in the flesh was just so so amazing.
Thank you everyone and I hope you dont mind me posting this here
Many thanks
Khalid Rashid
July 19th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Gentlemen,
Rafi Saab had sung between 1300 and 1400 songs (solos, duets and group songs) from 1970 onwards till the end. I have the break-up of these by year, by solos/duets/group songs and by co-singer! I have not posted those details in order not to add to the confusion!
Venkat
July 19th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
MYK
Superb most mate!!!. I was thinking of presenting the number of songs Rafi sang in 70’s, as per my record it is about 1250 from 70 to 80. Have you also included the 12 albums that Rafi recored in that period plus several regional songs.
A close analysis of your the stats provided by you suggest that even the best period of KK in terms of number of songs is not that much compared to the best period of Rafi in 60’s specially when he was actually recording 1 song a day.
Mind you we are only discussing quantity here, in terms of quality KK would finish a million miles behind Rafi and even KK fans know that in the depth of their hearts. It is simply mind bogling the impact Rafi managed to create even in 70’s with so many things against him, he was indeed a fierce competitor and with every year in 70’s the margin in terms of quantity reduced with Rafi reaching the winning line in 79 and 80.
He proved a point not that it was required, he proved that he could win in anyone’s territory, he showed that all that backing of RD was not enough to keep him aside and infact RDB at that point of time was in doldrums. The justice was done.
July 19th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Post 81
Well done, those figures are more accurate. Mr. Halder do not be upset, i listed the facts,
July 19th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Dear friends,
mostly media said that it was Mohd Rafi cameback in 1977 but the true is that was RD cameback not Mohd Rafi because mohd Rafi was there,plz listen to Mohd Rafi and RD with KK songs from 1970 to 1975 u will understant what I mean.
Dear maybe u r remmber the media made Mr Amithab Bachchan from Superstar to zero and same media made him again superstar it was same happened with Mohd Rafi as I think,When they asked mr Bachchan u was superstart he said said that i am not superstant u media made me superstar and u r(media) who made us superstart……………..
July 19th, 2007 at 10:59 am
ref post 80:
Dear Rafifan, thanks for your kind words. No, I didn’t graduate from KGP, but I was close by.
July 19th, 2007 at 10:44 am
ref post 79:
>>Pardon me but your posts are too repetitive, post 60 is a joke specially the number of songs you have listed for Rafi & Kishore.
Thanks for the compliment; didn’t know I was so good at jokes. Getting better at it by watching Kishore on youtube.
>>The list is dubious and inaccurate beyond belief. Just to prove your invalid point that Rafi made a comeback through HKKN, you have manipulated the numbers.
Thinking I might have made a mistake, I checked the numbers again; it’s still 27 for 1975. Why don’t you try it? I’m sure you know how to use the left mouse button; tell me if you get a different number. I’m not very good at manipulation. Read the following sentence that I wrote carefully:
“Granted it’s not an exhaustive database, but it is still indicative of the trends.”
Instead of 27, it may have been 54. In 1960, by the same token, instead of 230, he sang 460. Do you get the idea? You’ll have to check with someone like Venkat ji to get the actual numbers. Assuming that rafi’s db and kishore’s db are representative samples, they show trends. Whether you plot the graph on an absolute scale or a transformed scale doesn’t matter.
Let me retract my statement on hkkn. Let us all agree that rafi made a comeback with uphaar and haathi mere saathi, or better still, he was always at no. 1. Are you happy now?
If you still find my posts repetitive, just ignore them. Remember that I am as much welcome on this forum as you are.
July 19th, 2007 at 10:13 am
ref post 74:
Naveenji,
I agree with everything you’ve said in your post. I’m sure you, like me, waited for Rafi to return to the top. We may differ a little on the timeline but so what? Our aspirations were the same. We knew that he had made a comeback.
July 19th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Vijay: even he mentioned that the tallies were incomplete. Nevertheless, he was trying to show a trend of Rafi increasing the number of songs rendered - which it did. A more complete tally would further highlight the trend but this sufficed. You’re right to cite Amit Kumar but I’d refrain from comparing numbers of Rafi to number of Amit Kumar. Quality must be comparable to quality before you get into quantity I’m not sure if Amit Kumar (who actually had similar potential as his father as a singer) could meet up to the quality of Rafi or Kishore.
July 19th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Manish,
I would like to add Rajesh Roshan as the last trend-setter of composers from the Golden Era. He came after Pancham and with Julie (1975) established a new musical grammar that was to be followed by others down the years. His music was totally different from that of any composer at that time, very fresh.
I don’t agree when people mention if it was not for Pancham, musicians like RR or Bappi could not have introduced their styles, and that Pancham broke the mould which allowed those composers to do what they wanted. RR mentioned in a recent interview that he believed the previous generation of composers did not fully tap into western music, and he wanted to do that and did with great success. So I think regardless of Pancham, RR would have been able to accomplish this. This, and saying RR’s music sounds like Pancham (as I have heard many say) is also hilarious because it is definitely not true, their styles are totally different. Bappi was more of a Pancham imitator. Many a times, Bappi compositions sound like Pancham creations, but RR songs are in a class of their own, and are totally different from RD songs.
RR is a very under-rated composer, full of talent, he could handle instruments as good as RD, and his orchestra was classy. He also knew the worth of Rafi, their combination was great. The two combo’s that would have been awesome in the 80’s would have been RD-Rafi and RR-Rafi.
The letter “R” is the common factor in all three.
July 19th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Hi P. Haldar,
Thanks for your post. I know I haven’t lived through the Rafi period as you and others have but I am lucky that I was introduced to this genius by my father who is a huge rafi fan as yourself and others on this forum. For me there has never been a better male singer ever on the face of this earth. I was just watching a show a few days ago and they played the song “Meri Mohabbat Pak Mohabbat” (April Fool), a beautiful song, probably a Jaikishan composition, the way Rafi managed to sound just like Biswajeet amazed me, and he could do it for all actors, that is what you call a genius.
I know you didn’t compare Jaikishan with pancham, I was just pointing out some of their similar qualities. I rank Pancham a very talented composer, it is definitely true that without him KK would not have reached the heights he did. However there were other reasons why KK also reached there (reasons not based on his talent) and he was lucky that things were on his side.
I think the reason why LP gave Kishore songs would be due to producer influence, even though LP may have displaced SJ, producers had a big hand in their songs those days. At the same time, LP kept on giving Rafi hit after hit song in that 72-76 period. Another reason which one of my friends came up with is because LP wanted to be partial (fair). LP also used Mukesh probably for this reason, so even if Rafi sang most of their songs, they still gave songs to others, something RD should have learnt from them. For RD, Rafi was his second most used singer, but the margin between the number of Rafi and KK songs in RD’s repetoire is quite large, and that is where the difference lies. It is due to Rafi’s genius that he left an everlasting impact in RDB’s musical heritage that if one talks of the best of RDB, Rafi’s name is bound to come up.
Let me just take some stats from Box Office India, Teesri Manzil was one of the top most selling albums in the 60’s, out of 15 albums. When coming to the 70’s, the two RD albums that sold the most are HKSKN and YKB.
TM might be Pancham’s best ever selling album, HKSKN was again remembered because of Rafi even if KK had his share of songs in it, and the crowning glory of YKB, and probably Pancham’s most popular and best romantic duet is “Churaliya Hai Tumne”. So Rafi is the common denominator in all three films, as is Nasir Hussain, and if you add Caravan to the list along with PKM, here are truly 5 of RD’s greatest albums, he did reserve his best for NH.
The stats you provided was nice, I received a more accurate list of Rafi-KK songs in the 70’s, as you mentioned the database is incomplete:
Kishore - Rafi
1970: 47-131
1971: 102-131
1972: 137-95
1973: 146-80
1974: 137-83
1975: 106-68
1976: 103-67
1977: 147-101
1978: 122-91
1979: 77-84
1980: 126-103
1981: 135-65
Based on these stats, one can see Rafi had more songs that Kishore even in 1971, a peak Kishore period. From 72-76, each of the years has Kishore leading in songs but not by a whole lot. In 1977 Rafi inches closer just like in 1978, and in 1979 and 1980 he has more songs. This list shows the number of songs that were released those years, so if Rafi had 65 songs in 81, they were recorded in 1980, and if you add them to the 1980 total, it will be more than Kishore’s 1980 output. For ‘Teri Galiyon Mein” Rafi won the film world magazine award and according to RB this was the start of his comeback on the charts. As one can see Rafi and Kishore sang almost the same amount of songs from 1970-1980, it is surprising how critics and others can call the 70’s a Kishore decade, the stats prove otherwise.
I don’t know why SD didn’t record the whole Abhimaan album with Rafi, they didn’t come together for a lot of films in that time frame, and it is true RD handled many of his films at that time. The last solo Rafi sang for SD in Us Paar has an RD influence. It is surprising that Pancham recorded more songs with Rafi than SD did from 70-75. One would think it would be the other way around.
I would like to add that I think “Pyar Hai Ik Nishan Qadmon Ka” from Mukti would make it to a top 10 RD list. It is the Hindi version of Pancham’s “Madhumosh Jaaye”. Pancham sang it well but Rafi just blows you away with his rendition, a masterpiece of a song. I feel RD should have given “Suhaani Chandni Raatein” to Rafi as well, even though Mukesh did a good job, Rafi would have taken the song to greater heights.
July 19th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Mr. Haldar,
I love your posts. I know that Haldar is a common name but just wondering whether you graduated from IIT-Kgp in the late 60’s or early 70s?
July 19th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Mr. halder
Pardon me but your posts are too repetitive, post 60 is a joke specially the number of songs you have listed for Rafi & Kishore.
The list is dubious and inaccurate beyond belief. Just to prove your invalid point that Rafi made a comeback through HKKN, you have manipulated the numbers.
The Rafi databse on this site which is way incomplete has more songs that you have mentioned. Use your logic, how could Rafi record 25 or 28 songs in a year. Small time singers like Amit Kumar and Shailendra were recoding 15 songs a month.
Do your research correctly before making such naive posts.
July 19th, 2007 at 3:01 am
I do not approve the title of the thread: at first i thought it was a silly attempt to answer it as NO but rather it is overdone to somehow present that the other MDs did the same - not exactly. they had to yield to the producers who wanted to ride off the kishore wave. they had to yield to the indian press that was giving a lot of hype which made people think that kishore was the new voice to listen to. lp for example, often brought in rafi even against the wishes of producers and such. you just couldn’t yield to the hype. hype - can you believe there are some who’d put sukwinder singh in the same league as rafi during the peak of chaiya chaiya (yukky song btw). just writing such a sentence makes me want to throw up right now - no kidding.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:56 am
Corrections: in defense of kishore - he was supposed to sound like that for the picturization so it isn’t his fault but rather his genius to sound slurry and hoarse. if he wanted, he could sung better but the illustration demaded else. i also meant to write that the public needed a new combo of voice AND face to be willing to move on to a new change. rafi catered to this want for change of music values, evolved, and moved up to #1 again - amazing.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:51 am
Irfan: why did BR Chopra yield to the music director or the singer? He is the producer - he has the ultimate say (whether it is wise or not). We just heard about some producer forcing Naushad (a very respected MD whom you’d probably be disinclined to ignore) & Rajendra Kumar to stick with Mukesh no matter how much they preferred Rafi. It’s a major blow to ego to yield like that for one song (mind you - that one song can sometimes make a film alone but still).
To everyone else: Yes, RDB was the chief architect in Rafi’s sidelining but let’s not give him too much credit: he got the help of MANY OTHER FACTORS that emerged in 1969 - the inevitable CHANGE of music values & want for a brief change of a new voice - it is amazing Rafi’s greatness could thwart this for 20 years! The combined effort of Rajesh Khanna, RDB, & Kishore Kumar. Take out any of these three and the individual effort would have been futile IMO. Kishore & RDB were around long before 1969 - but they could do little. The other factors came in - the biggest being inevitable change and want for a new voice - the only question was when could a voice, voice good enough for people to allow the change. That was the biggest factor alone, not RDB - as you saw that Rafi Sahab evolved to cater to the 70s too.
Why is RDB so much more popular today among the Internet users or even young people in India for the “CLASSIC” MDs? He was latest the trend setter from the “classic” period (i.e. before Udit & Alka with new MDs came in) and so recency affect kicks in. RDB + Rajesh Khanna / Amitabh Bachchan are the last most famous superstars of yesteryear. Additionally, Indian press really hyped these guys and that is why they are so popular even now. Let’s see what happens 50 years from now. It’s about Indian press’ hype. Why was Rajesh Khanna more popular than Dharmendra? Maybe him being single helped the situation ALONG with the fact that the was the face of the new trend which was the product of a COMBINED effort and synchronization of factors. Else, IMO, Dharmendra was better looking, more suitable as an action hero (Sholay!), had more hits than Rajesh Khanna even during the period where Rajesh Khanna was hailed the #1 superstar, and this is the only thing really open to debate - IMO had a better combination with Rafi+Dharmendra vs. Rajesh+Kishore. I just saw again Yeh Jo Mohabbat Hai - Rajesh Khanna looks like an idiot in the beginning with a hoarse, slurry voice. Rafi + Dharmendra is pure melody an good looks melded together perfectly. It just that Rajesh + Kishore was the “new trend” hence the popularity.
A lot of hype. I have yet to see Kati Patang (low reviews btw) or Amar Prem - read the storyline - seems like a stupid story to me (and the low reviews show that) but people back then didn’t care - they were up for hype.