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Bahrain-based performer Hashim Rahman is aiming to give legendary Indian playback singer Mohammed Rafi’s songs a new lease on life by rendering the melodies in a different form and style.
The Indian expatriate from Kerala, who has been living in Bahrain for 13 years, has spent the past two years working on his musical ‘Rafi Resurrection’ project in which he will record songs in Bahrain and India along with videos captured at different locations across the kingdom and back home.
“This concept was launched a couple of years ago at the Bahrain Keraleeya Samajam (BKS) auditorium with BKS president P V Radhakrishna Pillai,” said Hashim, 38, a marketing professional from Riffa.
“I wanted to create a series of songs by recreating classics from the all-time greatest immortal singers of India Mohammed Rafi.”
Rafi, who died on July 31, 1980, was known for his versatility and range of voice. His songs varied from fast peppy numbers to patriotic hymns as well as sad and romantic ballads, qawwalis, ghazals, bhajans and classical. He could mould his voice to the persona and style of any actor lip-syncing a song on the screen of a Bollywood movie and received six Filmfare Awards and one National Award.
In 1967, Rafi was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India and in 2001, he was bestowed with the Best Singer of the Millennium title posthumously by Hero Honda and Stardust magazine. He was also voted the Greatest Voice in Hindi Cinema in a CNN-IBN poll in 2013.
Rafi sang for more than 1,000 Hindi films and recorded as many as 7,000 melodies throughout his career, spanning several languages and dialects such as Konkani, Assamese, Bhojpuri, Odia, Bengali, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Magahi, Maithili, and so on. Apart from Indian languages, he also sang in some foreign languages, including English, Farsi, Arabic, Sinhala, Mauritian Creole, and Dutch.
Hashim hopes to follow in his footsteps, but bring a new life to his sound to appeal to the masses.
“First of all, to my knowledge, this is the first-ever recreation series made by a Malayalee singer,” he told GulfWeekly.
“Only a few Malayalee singers have sung Rafi’s songs, and that too in karaoke recordings. They were not musically recreated. My songs will be different in their orchestration. The length, style and tempo of the songs will be different.
“My aim is to reintroduce Mohammed Rafi and his music to the younger generation. Most of them don’t know who he is and prefer the new style of music that is out there. I’m transforming his sound so that youngsters know who he is and bringing a sense of nostalgia to his fans.
“Mohammed Rafi was an amazing singer and I find that my vocal tone fits his style as I am also a soulful and expressive singer like him. I hope to accomplish as much as he had in my musical career.”
Hashim started singing at the age of 10 and never looked back. He has been performing in an array of live ghazals and musical concerts in Bahrain and Kerala since 2008. He was the first runner-up in a GCC singing competition by Voice of Kerala FM in 2017 and also had eight of his songs featured on Malayalam musical channels— Manorama Music and Millennium Audios.
His first playback song is set to be released in 2024 in the new Malayalam movie entitled Sufi, directed by Zabir Abbas.
While he awaits to hear his song on the big screen next year, he is currently devoting his time to releasing Rafi songs on his YouTube channel Hashim Rahman Official.
Hashim aims to release a new video every two months and has so far uploaded seven Rafi Resurrection songs. His goal is to hit a total of 25.
For details, follow @hashimrahmansofficial on Instagram.
