Mohammad Rafiq Shinwari () was a singer and composer of

Pashto Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...

music in Pakistan. Though he also tried his luck with

poetry and wrote a few poems as well but it was his compositions for early

movies that earned him a big name in this field. A disciple of Abdul Sattar Bacha, he was brought to Bacha's abode by his mother as a child in the late 1940s from

Nangarhar Nangarhār (Pashto: ; Dari: ), also called Nangrahar or Ningrahar, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country and bordering Logar, Kabul, Laghman and Kunar provinces as well as having an internatio ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

. Rafiq Shinwari started his career as a

Qawali Qawwali is a form of Sufi Islamic devotional singing originating in the Indian subcontinent. Originally performed at Sufi shrines throughout the Indian subcontinent, it is famous throughout Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and has ...

singer at Radio

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

Peshawar Peshawar is the capital and List of cities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by population, largest city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is the sixth most populous city of Pakistan, with a district p ...

Studio in 1961. Subsequently he became a household name among the

Pashtun Pashtuns (, , ; ;), also known as Pakhtuns, or Pathans, are an Iranic ethnic group primarily residing in southern and eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. They were historically also referred to as Afghans until 1964 after the ...

population of both

and

in the 1970s and 1980s. He primarily sang the

Sufi Sufism ( or ) is a mysticism, mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic Tazkiyah, purification, spirituality, ritualism, and Asceticism#Islam, asceticism. Practitioners of Sufism are r ...

poetry of

Hamza Shinwari Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari (), commonly known as Hamza Baba () was a prominent Pashto poet, playwright and author. His works are studied at Master-level at the University of Peshawar. He is considered a bridge between classic Pashto literature a ...

and

Rahman Baba Abdur Rahmān Momand (; – 1706) or Rahmān Bābā (), was a renowned Afghan Sufi Saint, member of Sufi Dervish and poet from Peshawar (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan) during the Mughal era. He, along with his contemporary Khush ...

. Himself a

by heart, Ustad Shinwari used to sing in a rare husky voice, which would leave his audience in a state of trance. As a music director some of his

movies include Orbal, Ehsan, Qaidi, Dameena, Topak Zama Qanoon, Iqrar, Naway Da Yawai Shpai, and Khana Badosh. Out of his two sons, namely, Shaifq and Ghulam Ali, the later committed suicide in 1988 for unknown reasons. In 2004, the Rafiq Shinwari Ulasi award was established in his memory.

References

Links to some audio and video songs

Frontier Post articlePashto Songs of Rafiq ShinwariSufi Songs of Rafiq Shinwari
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Pashtun people Pakistani people of Afghan descent Pakistani male singers Pashto-language singers People from Nangarhar Province Musicians from Peshawar {{Pakistan-singer-stub