Anwar

He was born in Bombay in 1949, the son of a stage singer, and grew up singing Rafi in stage shows; the composer Kamal Rajasthani gave him a first song in Mere Gharib Nawaz (1973), and Rajesh Roshan's Mere Gharib Nawaz qawwali was noticed. Salaam Memsaab for Laxmikant-Pyarelal (Shola Aur Shabnam, 1981), Arpan, Sohni Mahiwal, Mard and Yaarana gave him his hits; he sang for Rishi Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna, Jeetendra and Sunny Deol, and in Bhojpuri and Gujarati films.

Assignments stopped almost completely after the late 1980s. He continued stage work and lives in Mumbai; his son Anwar Hussain Jr. sings.

Anwar's voice is a soft, husky tenor with the Rafi curves reproduced almost exactly — the breathy entry, the little break on the high note — and a mellowness of its own that suits the slow ghazal-style song. Mohabbat Ab Tijarat Ban Gayi Hai shows what it could do when a composer wrote for it rather than for the memory of someone else.