The 36th death anniversary of legendary folk singer Mai Bhagi was observed on Thursday.

Mai Bhagi was born in 1920 in a small village surrounded by the vast and unforgiving 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.

Mai Bhagi died on July 7, 1986 at the age of 66 years.