Here is an excerpt from an interview of Shankar of Shankar-Jaikishan fame, in which he talks about Rafi Sahab. This is contributed by PrinceAli@HF

If you have always played fair, how come, following his virtuosity under your baton in Shree 420 and Chori Chori, Manna Dey, then running neck and neck with Rafi, was gradually eased out by you in favour of Rafi?

There was no easing out of Manna, it was just that Rafi had greater clarity of expression, better enunciation, better diction. Language was never a bar to Rafi’s sense of expression, whereas with Manna there could at times be problems in this direction. Why, to this day, certain top singers in our midst have this problem with language and diction which effect their clarity of expression. Rafi’s soz no male singer could match. His voice had aatma, it was Bhagwan ki den. There will not be another singer like Rafi.

This blog was published on Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 6:39 am and is filed under Meri Awaaz Suno. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.