Happy Birthday, Madam!

6 comments on “Happy Birthday, Madam!”

Nice post Richard :) Her voice is so lovely!!! Maybe you can help me expand on my Noor Jehan collection!

Thank you, Memsaab. Sure, I’d be happy to help you expand your Noor Jehan collection, if there’s any way I can.

You mentioned downloading songs from emusic; I guess I should do that sometime. I’ve really enjoyed that handful-plus of pre-partition songs that I found at the BFI site (which we talked about sometime back), and then there’s a bunch more that I got from Cool Toad. (Though I need to reload them from disc, which I haven’t done yet since changing computers.) Cool Toad has quite a collection, so I’ll probably go back there for more.

YouTube has been a great source of Noor Jehan clips for me (I have a whole bunch of favorites from her in my YouTube site) and I’ve found a few full Noor Jehan films online – not always in YouTube, sometimes elsewhere. (The “owners” of the Pakistani films don’t seem as eager to remove online stuff as those from much more southerly parts of the subcontinent. :)

I have a couple of her films on DVD but not much, though I intend to pick up more sometime at the aforementioned Pakistani DVD store… I’m a little reluctant to spend (especially when the DVDs lack subs, just like the online versions) because of my recession-worsened finances. But maybe if my online favorites start disappearing or I get a little more money in my pocket, whichever happens first. :)

I have also been looking regularly in the Bollywood stores for her pre-partition films but not much luck there. (I wouldn’t even have Anmol Ghadi if not for a generous shipment from Doc Bollywood) …. I think Friends is supposed to have released Village Girl. Yes, I’d even risk another Friends DVD purchase for that!

Hear, hear!

lovely stuff.

Friends have released ‘Village Girl’ recently.This 1945 movie has a couple of good songs composed by Shyam Sunder.Here is the link to the song considered to be one amongst her all time greats from the movie – ‘Baithi hoon teri yaad ka lekarke sahara’.

Thank you, Bawa.

Veda, thanks for the Village Girl clip. This is good… I think it’s a better copy than the one I saw sometime back. I recall, there were a few of these scenes from Village Girl on YouTube. All of them concluded with Noor swinging that rock on a string(?) and accidentally hitting someone or other, with varying consequences. :)

I feel your pain re: subtitles! :)

I’ll look on Cool Toad, eMusic had quite a few of her recordings as well, although I don’t know how many of them were Indian (pre-Partition) as opposed to Pakistani…

Dances on the Footpath