MOHAMED RAFI: THE VERSATILE GENIOUS
It is over 25 years since Mohammad Rafi passed away (July 31, 1980), but his voice continues to haunt us even today. After all, he's left behind a rich legacy -- of songs sung by him over 35 years.
Rafi's voice, ranging from the melancholic to the boisterous, was such that it suited every mood and every occasion in films. His is one voice that has been imitated the most: to be called a Rafi clone is actually regarded as a compliment by most newcomers. Yet, no one has been able to recreate the Rafi magic. Perhaps, no one can. At best, each of these singers has been able to imitate just one aspect of his voice. But nobody possesses the versatility that Rafi did.
The singers that comes the closest to Rafi is Sonu Nigam, Debashish DasGupta, and Vipin Sachdeva and Bankin Pathak.
In spite of his success, Rafi remained an extremely quiet and reserved person. Many of his admirers could not fathom how such a low-profile man sounded so flamboyant in some of his songs. His son Shahid recalls, "When we asked him whether he had actually sung the 'yahoo' number, he just smiled and nodded. We kept asking him, 'how did you sing this song?' But he wouldn't expand on the subject. It was difficult for us to imagine a gentle person like him shouting out that yahoo." Perhaps, it was Rafi's humility and willingness to learn that made him such a great singer.
Maybe if he was alive today he might have been collecting royalty from "Yahoo"
next the early years
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