G.M. Durrani
Ghulam Mustafa Durrani was the busiest male playback singer in Bombay in the years before Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh and Talat Mahmood arrived. He sang for Naushad, Ghulam Haider, Anil Biswas and Shyam Sundar, acted a little, composed a little, and faded quickly after 1950 — but a young Rafi had learnt his trade by listening to him, and Durrani lived to be honoured for it.
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Life
He was born in Peshawar in 1919 into a Pathan family that opposed his singing; he ran away to Bombay in the mid-1930s, worked as an actor at Sohrab Modi's Minerva Movietone and on All India Radio, and sang his first film songs around 1940. Through the 1940s he was in constant demand — Shama, Naukar, Humayun, Shahjehan, Mela, Beqasoor, Shabnam — and his duets with Shamshad Begum, Zohrabai and Noor Jehan were among the hits of the decade.
He was religious and in the early 1950s turned away from film work, which he came to feel was wrong; he sang on radio, acted in a few films, and lived quietly. He received a Lifetime award late in life and died in Bombay in 1988.
The voice
Durrani's voice was a smooth, light baritone, more relaxed and modern-sounding than Saigal's, with a clear Urdu and an ease in the fast song. Rafi's early recordings show how closely he had studied it.
Composers
- Naushad
- Ghulam Haider
- Anil Biswas
- Shyam Sundar
- Husnlal-Bhagatram
- Khemchand Prakash
Sang with
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