Born as Mohammed Rafi Sahab, Mohammed Rafi ranks among India's foremost playback singers. Across a career that lasted nearly five decades, he contributed an estimated 26,000 songs to 76 films. Performing in every national language, he delivered ghazals, qawwalis, and bhajans with equal command. In 1965 the Indian government presented him with the Padma Sri award.
Rafi grew up in Kotla Sultansingh, a modest village in Punjab, and had sung for as long as he could remember. Although his father, a local landlord, opposed the pursuit, his brother, a barber, provided steadfast encouragement. He entered the industry with his first recordings for the Shyam Sunder-directed Gul Baloch in 1941 and for Gaon Ki Gauri in Bombay the following year, quickly ascending to the highest ranks of Indian music. Among the composers he worked with were Naushad, Sachin Dev Burman, Usha Khanna, and O.P. Nayyar. In the late 1950s he concluded that singing constituted a sin and relocated to London, remaining absent from music until his sons urged him back into the recording studio.
His greatest influence occurred throughout the 1960s, when he supplied the singing voice for Shammi Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Dev Anand, Shashi Kapoor, Raj Kumar, and Kishore Kumar. A dispute with Lata Mangeshkar, India's leading playback singer, in the late 1960s produced a six-year interval without any joint performances, yet the two artists later resolved their conflict and resumed recording together.
Rafi maintained a full schedule until the end of his life. After completing a session for the film Aas Paas on July 31, 1980, he died of a heart attack.
