At 100, Rafi's golden voice remains young

Born on Christmas Eve in 1924, Mohammed Rafi would have turned 100 this year. His birthplace, Kotla Sultan Singh, in Amritsar district was like any other village of Punjab's Majha region. Its residents reared cattle and like any other child his age, young Rafi, nicknamed Phiko, would take the neighbour's cattle to graze after school, humming folk songs.

- Harjap Singh Aujla

In 1942, Phiko joined his father, Haji Mohammad Ali, who ran a dhaba in Lahore. He found a job at a hairdresser's saloon. While attending to customers, Rafi could not resist singing Waris Shah's Heer and Piloo's Mirza. His sweet voice attracted new customers. Someone visiting the studios of All India Radio, Lahore, told the story of Rafi's melodious voice to the local AIR head, Jiwan Lal Mattoo. One day, Mattoo went to the barber shop and heard the young man's voice for himself. Impressed, he called Rafi for an audition. Approved as a folk singer in Punjabi, Rafi was told to report to Mattoo's second-in-command Budh Singh Taan. Taan honed Rafi's talent. In no time, his voice reached the film studios of Lahore and a new music director, Shyam Sunder, got a Punjabi song recorded in Rafi's voice for the film, Gul Baloch. The film flopped, but Rafi's passion took him to Ustad Barqat Ali Khan, the younger brother of the legendary Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali