Folk Singer Mai Bhagi's death anniversary observed

07 Jul, 2015

ISLAMABAD: The death anniversary of legendary folk singer Mai Bhagi was observed on Tuesday as her fans remembered her contributions in the field of folk singing.

The fans including the officials of Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) termed the folk singer as a legend adding that her collection of music was masterful, enthralling, magnetic and rare.

The music spoke for itself and lived on despite her absence, said an official of PNCA while talking to APP.

Mai Bhagi was born in 1920 in a small village surrounded by the vast Thar Desert.

She began to sing Thari songs as a child.

After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Bhagi's family began to regularly travel to Karachi to earn livelihood.

By the early 1960s, Mai Bhagi was regularly appearing on Radio Pakistan singing songs in Thari and Sindhi languages, but she remained rooted in her small and impoverished village in Tharparkar.

It is believed that though she had been singing `Kharee neem kay neechey' ever since she was a teenager, She first sang the song on Radio Pakistan in the early 1960s.

But it was not until she sang it on the state-owned PTV in 1974 that the song became a national mainstream hit and turned Bhagi into a Sindhi/Thari folk star.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2015

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