Mohammed Aziz

Biography

Mohammed Aziz (born as Syed Mohammed Aziz-Un-Nabi; 2 July 1954 – 27 November 2018), also known as Munna, was an Indian multilingual playback singer who primarily worked in Bollywood, Odia, and Bengali films. He sang about 20,000 songs, including Bhajans (Hindi, Odia & Bengali), Sufi devotional songs and other genres, in more than ten different Indian languages. He made his first film appearance in the Odia film Jaga Hatare Pagha, directed by Mohammad Mohsin, with the song Rupa Sagadi re Suna Kaniya.. He had a hit with 1984''s "Mard Tangewala", composed by Anu Malik, which was introduced in the film Mard.
He sung numerous duets in 1980s and 1990s, though many of his best-known songs, such as "Main Deewana Na Jana Kab", “Tune bechain itna jyaada kiya”, “Main teri mohabbet me pagal ho jaaunga”, "Lal Dupatta Malmal Ka", "My Name Is Lakhan", "Aap Ke Aa Jane Se", "Aajkal Yaad Kuchh" and "Dil Le Gayi Teri Bindiya", were recorded while he was a playback singer. He could sing at the 7th note (Saatwan Sur).
Originally a restaurant singer in Ghalib Bar, he went to Mumbai around 1982, where he was introduced to the Hindi cinema by Anu Malik. The recipient of two uncertain awards for Best Playback Singer, his last film was Kaafila.

Career

Aziz was involved with music during his childhood. He started his professional musical career in Manini, under the Odia music composer Radha Krushna Bhanja. He went on to sing many songs in Odia and was known for his work with actor Siddhanta Mahapatra. Aziz went to Mumbai to improve his career opportunities, and was involved with the Bollywood film Ambar (1984), with music director Sapan-Jagmohan; however, his first prominent singing role was in the 1985 film Mard, by music director Anu Malik. The title song "Mard Tangewala" became a hit. After the success of this song, he had several further hits in 1985, such as "Aate Aate Teri Yaad Aa Gayi", from Jaan Ki Baazi. Aziz appeared in the 1986 Bengali film Bouma. During his career, he worked with several famous music directors, such as Naushad, Shankar–Jaikishan, O. P. Nayyar, Ravi, Khayyam, Kalyanji-Anandji, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, R. D. Burman, Bappi Lahiri, Rajesh Roshan, Usha Khanna, Anu Malik, Anand–Milind, Jatin–Lalit, Ravindra Jain, Raamlaxman, Aadesh Shrivastava, Nadeem-Shravan, Viju Shah and Dilip Sen-Sameer Sen. He worked most often with compositional duo Laxmikant Pyarelalz singing over 250 of their songs. He also sung Lord Jagannath, bhajans and Odia film songs, until he was introduced as a playback singer in Hindi language films. He sang the title song of the 1997 TV serial Jai Hanuman. Besides working in film, he also participated in stage shows in India and other countries.
During his career, Mohammed Aziz had sung for Bollywood actors Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor, Dharmendra, Jeetendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Khanna, Shatrughan Sinha, Shashi Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Mithun Chakraborty, Naseeruddin Shah, Hemant Birje, Chunky Pandey, Govinda, Sanjay Dutt, Kumar Gaurav, Siddhanta Mahapatra, Shah Rukh Khan, Nana Patekar, Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Raj Babbar, Sunny Deol, Anil Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgan, Sumeet Saigal, Farooq Sheikh, Jackie Shroff, Mohnish Bahl, Aditya Pancholi and several others. He duetted with Kishore Kumar, Amit Kumar, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, Suresh Wadkar, Manhar Udhas, Shailendra Singh, Nitin Mukesh, Kumar Sanu, Vinod Rathod and Sudesh Bhosle.

Death

He was travelling from Kolkata to Mumbai on 27 November when he collapsed at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport where he was taken to Nanavati hospital for medical treatment. He died at hospital on 27 November 2018 of cardiac arrest, aged 64.