Jawan Hai Mohabbat (Noor Jehan)

I first got interested in this singer a fairly short time ago from reading a little Bollywood history and seeing the big question, “How might things have been different if she never left India during the partition?” (which I have noticed was asked very articulately by Doc Bollywood just about two years ago).  But I have grown to really appreciate this voice.  It also always jumps out at me when I’m listening to a variety of Bollywood songs, maybe because it’s so different from the voices that we’ve all gotten to know so well. But it’s also so nice to listen to…  I don’t feel that I’m the best judge about what makes a voice good, and I can’t say that I always gravitate toward a singing voice because it actually is good by most standards.  In fact, I’m still quite drawn to some singers in pop music who by most standards can’t sing very well at all.  But the fact that this woman had a legendary voice widely considered on par in quality to Lata Mangeshkar’s coincides nicely with the fact that I like her voice a lot too.  I like this song also – partly for the voice and partly for the fact that, as someone somewhere pointed out, it’s got a good beat.

I thnk she also looks very pretty singing it here – so it’s nice that this is one Bollywood clip in which the singing and the performance are done by one and the same person.  (Maybe part of the reason for that is that it was filmed in 1946.) 

But I didn’t find this song first from looking at the film clip.  I have posted some Noor Jehan clips before, and have deliberately searched for songs from her to post.  But I heard this first strictly through audio, on Doc Bollywood’s jukebox.  And after I heard it once, I just had to hear it again. (From the film Anmol Ghadi, directed by Mehboob Kahn.)

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P.S.  I just found a nice little collection of other Noor Jehan songs in (free) downloadable MP3s at the site of the British Film Institute.  They also have a Noor Jehan Gallery.