There was a time when it seemed that Noor Jehan would be there forever. For decades, she rolled out one number after another, maintaining her position at the top of the ladder. And the fans and lovers of music pursued and followed her with greater avidity than ever.

The span of Noor Jehan’s creative career seemed greater also because she was one of the pioneers of film song in the subcontinent. As she cut her first number for the films, the film song was still in its incipient stage aspiring to find its first big female star. The earlier ones were vocalists who were struggling to match their musical ingenuity with the demands of the new technology while failing to find the right balance. The recording companies had been around for some time, and due to its limitations and peculiarities, had changed vocalisation and with it the form of music. The limited duration of recorded sound which could be marketed with the 78 rpm discs formed the basis of the new genre of music known as the film song in the subcontinent.

The capability of Noor Jehan, and her arrival at the right moment must have helped hugely. She was still in her formative years as the new technologies arrived and it gave her the chance to adapt her singing accordingly. She was not really established enough at that time to be hardened in her ways of singing and making music. She had the malleability of teen years to mould her vocalisation according to the limitation of the recording then available and did indeed emerge the as the first superstar of film song in the 1930s.

She sang her own numbers on screen as there was no technological facility which later for want of a better word came to be known as the playback – where the star on screen would mimic a song sung by someone else. Thus, the separation of the vocalist and the actor appeared and went on to greater levels of specialisation. The earlier vocalists thus struggled to match the one against the other and many failed in their attempt. KL Saigal was able to keep the twosome going till the very end but his death in the late 1940s at a young age paved the way for the solidification of the two tracks – one of acting and the other of singing. Noor Jehan took it to the limits of possibility as she stretched it for another ten odd years. Her appearance may have aged but not her voice, thus the demands of the voice and appearance started to fall apart. This forced her to give up acting and retain singing. She was able to sing for another twenty odd years focusing just on her music and thus getting rid of the duality which may have been distracting.

She had the malleability of teen years to mould her vocalisation according to the limitation of the recording then available and did indeed emerge as the first superstar of film song in the nineteen thirties.

Her next big challenge was when she decided to move to Pakistan. She was at the top of her professional career and the producers, directors and composers all wanted to retain her as she was the leading film vocalist of the times. When she left, some said that the sur had departed from the film industry; some even wept in desperation. Her choice confounded many. For most people, her departure for a smaller arena, leaving the bigger one, was beyond the arc of natural progression. But she settled in her new country and tried to make the most of the few composers, limited technological facilities and a struggling film industry.

It also resulted in a wide open field for others in India to step into the void created by her absence. If there was patriotism to be located in her, it was this coming to a new country, leaving everything behind, and reconstructing the film world and film music. She had no need to do this. She had struggled in preteens and teens to come to the very apex of the new musical format. Some people look for her patriotism in the taranas she sang at different occasions, especially in 1965, but actually it was her contribution to music and films that should be lauded. Her contribution to the cultural makeup of the new country was immense. She gave the confidence and the strength to those struggling and showed them the way. The cultural profile of the country would not have been outlined properly without her songs. The taranas too came her way and she rendered them with the same consummate ease. It was her talent and single handed pursuit of that talent that made her truly undeterred. She shone as a beacon reflecting a rounded image of the country, dodging the one-dimensional ideological boorishness that many cherish.

The writer is a culture critic based in Lahore.