A song for everyone, for every moment

Sudhirendar SharmaCold wintry night had sent shudders down the spine when my thoughts had strayed towards those nameless thousands fighting for survival on the city pavements. Oscillating between pain and anguish, helplessness was writ large on such emotional pangs. Mohd. Rafi’s soothing number ‘main gaoon tum so jao’ gave expression to my emotions. Played upon request by RJ Sayema on a popular FM Channel, it was a rendition of hope borne out of despair.
Mohd. Rafi’s songs expressed every conceivable mood. Touching a wide array of emotions, his inimitable voice explored every feeling with the desired dose of sentiments. No wonder, listeners may have long forgotten the actors who mouthed his songs on screen but not his songs that have only grown in popularity ever since. Yasmin Khalid Rafi’s memoir on her father-in-law is a musical tribute to the greatest playback singer of all times.
That Rafi was a family man with a spiritual bent of mind; Yasmin gives the man behind the golden voice a persona. Rafi’s devotion to singing was borne out of his simplicity, he was always wary of causing hurt to anyone. Yasmin provides insights on what went behind the making of a great singer. Like most of us, she too was a fan who by a stroke of luck became part of the family. What follows is essentially a family narrative which could strike a chord with every reader. It is an absorbing reading on Hindi film music’s golden era.
As the author narrates nuggets of interesting anecdotes about the master, several of his memorable songs seem to play in the background. Yasmin tells us that whatever be the song, Rafi will immerse into it to bring out a memorable number that will captivate listeners. It may surprise his fans that Rafi was not particularly fond of Hindi films, ironic as this may be for someone who had lent his voice to so many of them.
Many wonder why Rafi never permitted his children to become singers. Rafi’s view was: ‘I doubt whether my children will be able to stand the rigors of the discipline that I had to follow to survive in the industry.’ Amongst his relationship with others in the film fraternity, Yasmin explains the apparent disagreement Rafi had with Lats Mangeshkar on the issue of royalties for their songs. Rafi was convinced that ‘our job is to sing and we get paid for it, let us not be greedy’. Greedy he never was, writes Yasmin, as he sang without fee for many new producers and musicians.
The trouble in talking about Rafi is that you never have enough of him; his voice is always in the air. Everyone has something to talk about him as Rafi belongs to millions of his fans across the world. It is over thirty years that we last heard him ‘live’ but his voice lives through us on a daily basis. Yasmin is right when she says that Rafi is the cultural ambassador for India who carries Indian music to the far corners of the world, through the medium of his innumerable songs.
(Sudhirendar is author (development journalist), academic (offers lectures), advisor (provides consultancy) and activist (providing knowledge backup) rolled into one, based in New Delhi.)

Leave a Reply