Playing kite with Rafi!

Manna counts Mohammed Rafi among his good friends. “He was a very good, godfearing, simple person. He never smoked, never chewed paan, never drank. He used to go to work, come back and spend time with his family. I was also that kind of person, so we used to vibe very well with each other. I have been fortunate to have a friend like him.”

Another common passion that the two great singers shared was kite-flying! “Rafi used to love to fly kites, and so did I. I used to be very good at it. And I used to cut all of Rafi’s kites! He used to ask me, ‘Dada, is there some magic in your kites?’ And I used to say, ‘Shall I tell you something? You don’t know how to fly kites!”

Sometimes originality is stifled by the producer who brings with him the song that must be copied. Very often a composer is hired for the melodies he has in hand which have passed the test abroad. What works in the west will work here is the mantra. There have been exceptions where music directors have sought inspiration from our own roots. But the overall response to the great Indian folk tradition has been weak. Bollywood has ensured that no popular form of music ever evolves. Even the Hindi pop bands which have emerged today are rooted in Bollywood or are inspired by Pakistani sufi-rock bands.

In the 70s and 80s, critics did not rave about Bollywood music like they do today. Then too there were songs which became big hits. Melodies that an entire nation sang.”
Taken from http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fname=ajith&fodname=20060621&sid=1

Great Job! Rafi is such a topic to explore that every time one ends up finding some thing new about his voice.

Carry on the good work.

It is wonderful to hear 85-year-old Manna Dey, himself a singing legend, talk about how honoured India is to have had a singer like Mohammad Rafi. It is nice to hear the much younger Sonu Nigam talk about Rafi — who died in July 1980 — and his heritage. “Not only did I dream of becoming a singer because of Rafisaab,” he told me the other day, “I also feel he was and will always be the giant of the musical scene in India.”

But it is certainly not a nice thing to hear that Rafi did not get his due in his own country, and that he had to be content with a Padma Shri while his contemporary Lata Mangeshkar was honoured with the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian accolade.

Even as one factors in the absurdity inherent in giving out awards including the Oscars — Alfred Hitchcock never got one and Martin Scorsese is still waiting for his — one ought to note that Rafi had received his Padma Shri in 1965. Lata received a higher award, the Padma Bhushan, but after four years. She received the Bharat Ratna in 2001. Rafi had long passed into the ages by then.

Lata is among very few musicians including M S Subbulakshmi who have received the Bharat Ratna. Does that mean other eminent musicians like Ravi Shankar, Balamurali Krishna, Bhimsen Joshi or Bade Ali Ghulam Khan did not win sufficient recognition in India?

Rafi was a singing meteor of his time. Just a dozen songs from films like Baiju Bawra, Kohinoor and Guide assures him immortality.

And yet, with virtually every composer and singer worshipping him, especially between 1950 and 1970, he got an undue number of songs to sing and unwittingly hurt the careers of contemporaries like Manna Dey, Talat Mahmood, and to a lesser degree, Hemant Kumar.

He was overexposed to such an extent that some of his songs, especially in films like Aman (composed by Shankar-Jaikishen) and Palki (composer: Naushad Ali) sounded overstretched and over dramatic. And yet some of the most eminent composers including S D Burman were afraid to tell the producers and the stars, especially Rajendra Kumar, Shammi Kapoor and Dharmendra, that there were other good singers.

One can count the number of songs Manna Dey sang for Burman; it is another story that those few songs — Poocho Na Kaise in Teri Surat Meri Aanken turned out to be milestones.

Even when Kishore Kumar became a phenomenon with his songs in Aradhana (1970) and monopolised the musical scene for two decades, Rafi was not sidelined. He sang lovely numbers like Kya Hua Tera Wada and Chura Liya for R D Burman even as Kishore hogged the scene. Producers like Nasir Hussain and Manmohan Desai preferred Rafi to Kishore, and older actors like Dharmendra were in Rafi’s camp.

I don’t remember ever reading or hearing that Rafi, who was known for his impeccable courtesy and great humanity, felt the least discomfort when Kishore Kumar monopolised the Hindi film music scene.

As one listens to some of the great singers of that era including Manna Dey, Talat Mahmood and Mukesh, one wonders why they did not get more songs.

“There were many occasions I thought of using Manna Dey for my songs,” composer Ravi told me two years ago, quickly adding that he was in awe of Rafi’s voice. “But the actors often demanded Rafi.” The few songs Manna Dey sang for Ravi in films like Waqt and Ek Phool Do Maali have become classics.

One producer to resist the We-must-have-Rafi syndrome was B R Chopra. He gave Mahendra Kapoor a good break in Gumrah and repeated him in many films including Dastaan, which featured Dilip Kumar who was beholden to Rafi.

Indian film music would perhaps have been richer had composers ranging from Madan Mohan to O P Nayyar to Salil Choudhury to S D Burman shown a stronger independent streak and nourished the singing career of other singers.

Regards

Sagar