Rahim Shah

Rahim Shah, who was born in December 12, 1975 at Pirkali in Swat is a leading pop singer. An ethnic pushtun, Rahim Shah was brought up, cultured and educated in Karachi. He is multi-lingual and is fluent in Pashto, Urdu, and Punjabi.

Rahim Shah's solo career began in the late 1990s with lots of hits to his credit from the onset, to mention the song Ghum which broke popularity records. Ghum is not Rahim Shah's personal composition. It is a Pashto folk song or tuppa, sung by an anonymous singer.

Haroon Bacha, a well-known Pushtun singer also sang Ghum, but it was Rahim Shah who made the song a hit because he translated the "tuppa" into Urdu and gave the song his own arrangement.

In a short span of time, Rahim Shah has shown his singing talent beyond belief. He sang Ghum under the supervision of Salman Alvi and recorded his album working extremely hard on making it different to others. The song turned out to be a huge hit and was highly appreciated by the people.

His Pushto album Peera became an instant hit after its release. Another album called Sabaru had success with the tracks Tap Tap and Payal, in the same year he released another Pushto album titled Medda Medda. After taking a short time of reflection he returned to work bringing another hit with the song Channa.

He also worked on three videos that were Priya and Rang Lai Mehndi, directed by Sarwar whereas Suhail Javed directed his third video Tere Ishq Ne. Shah also sang Jhoola, which he wrote and dedicated to his mother whom he dearly loves. He once said the only difference he saw between his debut album and his current album is the music arrangement.

Rahim Shah's new '12 track' album has taken a year to produce and will be released by the help of Fire Records. He has placed a real touch to his arrangements and used authentic music in the songs. The album contains music from three genres: Film based music, folk music and pop music.

Currently, he has also been working on a video with professional focus on high budget videos with visual and marketing aids, which are an essential requirement within today's music industry. Shah is known to have said, There is no doubt that we (Pakistani's) have got very good music, but they (Indians) have a very good market.

Rahim Shah attracted the attention of Indian audience with his song Pehle Toh Kabhi Kabhi Gham Tha, a tune which was sung in Pushto by renowned Pushto singer Haroon Bacha. This was later re-copied by Indian singer Altaf Raja. Rahim Shah still has somewhat of a fan base in India.

Rahim Shah's favourite singers are Salman Alvi, Nayyara Noor, Sonu Nigam, and Asha. He has interest in welfare work, but he doesn't like to ask for donations. He said about his short hair, Its better a singer is remembered for his cheerful sounding vocals than his long hair.