Noida: Om Books International is delighted to announce that Mohammed Rafi: Voice of Nation co-authored by his son Shahid Rafi and Sujata Dev is set to release in December 2011. The biography is a moving account of the life and times of the Golden Voice of India.

Born the second youngest of six sons of Hajji Ali Mohammed at Kotla Sultan Singh, a village near Amritsar in Punjab (British India), Rafi, nicknamed Pheeko, started singing by imitating chants of a fakir in his village. In the 1920s, Rafi’s father moved to Lahore to start a men’s salon in Noor Mohalla, Bhatti Gate, Lahore. Elder brother Mohammed Deen’s friend, Abdul Hameed spotted the talent in Rafi in Lahore and encouraged him to sing. Later he convinced the family elders to let Rafi move to Bombay and accompanied Rafi in 1944 to this city from where he would slowly steal into the heart of the nation.

Says Ajay Mago, Publisher, Om Books International, “It is indeed an honour to publish Mohammed Rafi’s biography. As a singer he was and still is deeply admired across generations.”