(b Kotta Sultansingh, 4 Dec 1924; d Bombay, 31 July 1980). Indian film playback singer. Rafi received early vocal training from classical singers Ustad Wahid Khan and Pandit Jivanlal. He sang for Radio Lahore during his teens and at the age of 20 recorded his first film song for the Punjabi movie Gul baloch (1944). He made his début as a Hindi playback singer in the same year, travelling to Bombay to record songs by the music director Naushad Ali for Pahele aap (1944). Despite his powerful voice and three-octave vocal range Rafi struggled to gain recognition during the 1940s. His duet with Noorjahan ‘Yahan badla wafa ka’ in Jugnu (1947) and his solo ‘Suhani rat dhal chuki’ in Dulari (1949) earned wide popularity but not the overwhelming success needed to reach stardom. His songs by Naushad in Aan and Baiju bawra (both 1952) similarly became ‘super hits’, but not until the 1960s did Rafi's success and popularity rise above that of all other male Hindi playback singers including Mukesh. Manna Dey, Kishore Kumar, Talat Mahmood and Hemant Kumar.
Rafi sang playback for most Hindi film actors during the 1960s and his identification as the singing voice of the new rebel star, Shammi Kapoor, brought him unmeasured success. Yet in 1969 the box-office hit Aradhana saw Rafi's lead toppled by singer Kishore Kumar. A disagreement with the ‘playback queen’ Lata Mangeshkar over the matter of royalty payments from record companies, which Lata was demanding, further harmed his career by effectively ending any future song duets by these two leading artists. His devotion to film singing nevertheless resulted in popular hit songs once again, notably ‘Kya hua tera wada’ in Hum kisi se kam nahin (1977) that won him his sixth annual ‘Best Male Playback Singer’ Filmfare award. Rafi's voice remains one of the most recorded in the history of Indian music.
ALISON ARNOLD