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Name
Noor Jahan (Allah
Wasai)
Date of Birth
21st September, 1926
Birth Place
Kasur,
British India (Now in
Pakistan)
Father’s Name
Madad Ali (Professional Musicians)
Mother’s Name Fateh
Bibi
First Song
Shala Jawaniyan Mane
Noor Jehan was a Singer and
Actress in
British India
and
Pakistan. She
is renowned as one of the greatest singers of her time in
South Asia and
was given the honorific title of Mallika-E-Tarranum English: the
Queen of Melody. She holds an astounding record of 10,000 songs to her
singing credits in various languages of Pakistan including
Urdu,
Punjabi and
Sindhi
languages, she is also considered to be the first female Pakistani
film director.
In 1957, Jehan was awarded the
President's Award
for her acting and singing capabilities.
Noor Jehan was one of the eleven
children of professional musicians Madad Ali and Fateh Bibi. The family
would often perform at
theatres.
Noor Jehan (Allah Wasai) began to
sing at the age of five or six years old and showed a keen interest in a
range of styles, including traditional folk and popular
theatre. At the
age of nine, Wasai drew the attention of Punjabi musician
Ghulam Ahmed Chishti,
who would later introduce her to stage in
Lahore. Once
her vocational training finished, Wasai pursued a career in singing
alongside her sisters in Lahore and would usually take part in the live song
and dance performances prior to screenings of films in film theatres.
The family moved to
Calcutta in
hope of developing the movie careers of Wasai and her sisters. She
recommended them to her husband,
Agha Hashar Kashmiri,
who owned a maidan theatre. It was here that Wasai received the stage name
Baby Noor Jehan.
In 1935, K.D. Mehra directed Pind di
Kudhi in which Jehan acted along with her sisters. She next acted in a film
called Missar Ka Sitara by the same company and sang in it for music
composer,
Damodar Sharma. Baby
Noor Jehan also played the child role of Heer in the film Heer-Sayyal. After
a few years in Calcutta, Noor
Jehan returned to Lahore in 1938. In 1939, Ghulam Hairder composed songs for
Jehan which led to her early popularity. She then recorded her first song
Shala Jawaniyan Mane for Dalsukh M. Pancholi's movie Gul Bakavli. Prior to
Khandaan Jehan was cast as a child artist. It was in 1942 that she played
the main lead opposite
Pran. Khandaan's
success saw her shifting to
Mumbai, where
she shared melodies with Shanta Apte in Duhai. It was in this film that Noor
Jehan lent her voice for the second time, to another actress named
Husn Bano. In
1945 Jehan player the lead role, along side
Lata Mangeshkar
and
Asha Bhosle, in
the movie Badi Maa.
Noor Jehan's last film in India was
Mirza Sahibaan which starred
Prithviraj Kapoor's.
Noor Jehan sang 127 songs in Indian films and the number of talking films
she made from 1932 to 1947 was 69. The number of silents was 12. Fifty-five
of her films were made in
Mumbai, eight
in
Calcutta, five
in Lahore and one in
Rangoon,
Burma.
After Pakistan Independence in 1947,
Jehan decided to move to Pakistan, her country of birth along with her
husband Rizvi. She left Bombay and settled in Karachi with her family. Three
years after settling in Pakistan, Noor Jehan starred in her first film in
Pakistan, Chanwey, opposite
Santosh Kumar,
which was also her first Punjabi film as a heroine. Shaukat and Noor Jehan
directed this film together making Noor Jehan Pakistan's first female
director. Noor Jehan's second film in Pakistan was Dopatta which turned out
to be an even bigger success than Chanwey.
Her penultimate film as an actress /
singer was Mirza Ghalib.This contributed to the strengthening of her iconic
stature. She gained another audience for herself. Her rendition of
Faiz Ahmed Faiz's
Mujshe pehli si mohabbat mere mehboob na maang is a unique example of
tarranum, reciting poetry as a song. Noor Jehan bade farewell to acting in
1963 after a career of 33 years (1930 to 1963). The pressure of being a
mother of six children and the demanding wife of a hero (Ejaz Durrani)
forced her to give up her career. Noor Jehan made 14 films in Pakistan, ten
in Urdu, four in Punjabi. Jehan visited India in 1982 to celebrate the
Golden Jubilee of the Indian talkie where she met Indian Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi
in New Delhi and
was received by
Dilip Kumar and
Lata Mangeshkar
in
Mumbai.
In 1986, on a tour of
North America,
Jehan suffered from chest pains and was dignosed with
angina after
which she went under a surgery to install a pacemaker. In 2000, Jehan was
hospitalised in Karachi and
suffered a heart attack. On Saturday afternoon, December 23,
2000, Noor Jehan died from
heart failure.
Her funeral took place at Jamia Masjid Sultan, Karachi and she was buried at
the Gizri Graveyard near the Saudi Consulate in
Karachi. |
