NOOR MOHAMMAD NOORAL.
(THE MOST POPULAR MODERN BALOCHI SINGER)
When Nooral first appeared on the Balochi music scene, it was flooded with pop and disco music. Imitations of Indian Filmi tunes, with facile tukbandi written by street poets with no literary talent, were also extremely popular.Nooral’s astounding success proves that the “public” longs for quality entertainment.
Nooral was born in the mid of 1940s in Noshkey, in district Chaghi, Balochistan. Soon after his birth, Nooral’s family migrated to Karachi where he spent his childhood. Drawn to music from an early age, he initially wanted to play the banjo. To learn the instrument, he joined a music club run by Ustad Muhammed Umer of Old Golimar, a veteran music master who had been quietly serving Sangeet for decades. But Ustad Umer’s club was closed down a short while later, and Nooral went on to Kalakot’s Ustad Yaqub.
Ustad Yaqub headed a performing group that did not have enough singers. On hearing the young Nooral hum the melodies of popular filmi songs. Ustad Yaqub allowed him to sing on stage. In those days, Nooral also accompanied the Qawwal party of Aziz Dilwash Qawwal. At the same time, he crooned the popular songs of Master Muhammed Ibrahim and Ustad Muhammed Jumman whenever he toured in the interior of Sindh.
Nooral cut his first two records with EMI in 1970, In 1974, four other songs were recorded. In the same year, he found his way into Radio Pakistan’s Quetta and Karachi centers, where he was paid 170/- rupees for his work. Nooral recalls that this was a generous amount for him at a time when he used to earn 4/- rupees for a day’s ironing at laundry soap.
Nooral’s almost instant success did not go to his head; however. Realizing that he lacked a formal musical education, he began to search for a teacher. One day, walking out of Ustad Beeday Khan’s club, he ran into his earliest teacher, Ustad Umar, whose club had been disbanded. The Ustad invited Nooral to work with him, now that his club had been re-opened.
Having found a teacher, Nooral embarked upon a rigorous regimen of training. He recalls that he sometimes sat from afternoon to evening, doing his "riaz" in a hot room with a roof made of asbestos sheets. During these exercises, he usually turned off the fan because its noise disturbed his concentration. Nooral also religiously attended Ustad Umer’s evening lectures on different ragas and other aspects of music. Accompanied by practical demonstrations, these sessions went on until late into the night
In the early ’70s, Nooral went to work in Dubai. Here, he met up with two music-loving brothers who have home been a kind of informal music club. Regular visitors to this gathering included Jagjit Sing, subsequently of the Jagjit-Chitraduo, who had not yet become famous. During his stay in the Gulf, Nooral continued to receive guidance from his teacher through detailed letters and audiocassette recordings.
Initially, Nooral sang Ustad ghazals at various gatherings all over the United Arab Emirates. In the early ’80s, however, he was drawn back to Balochi music by the members of a social organization, Baloch Kumak-kar, with whom he also began to do social work. It was that the Nooral decided to quit Urdu and take up Balochi singing permanently. “It was a period of popular and disco music at home. “Nooral recalls, “but it did not influence me because I was so far away from it all.” Soon thereafter, audiocassettes containing selections from Nooral’s performance in the Gulf started appearing in the Pakistani market.
It was during a visit home in 1988, however, that Nooral recorded his first cassette in a studio. Following its massive success, the market was flooded with Nooral’s cassettes. But the majority of these were bootleg Mehfil recordings, for which he did not receive any payment. Dealers were so keen to cash in on his popularity that one of them even released cassette titled Rafique OK in Nooral’s style without the consent of the singer, who is one of Lyari’s most popular stage artists. This tape was recorded at a wedding where Mr. OK, like other junior singers, sang several of Nooral’s songs.
To date, Nooral has done eight studio- recorded cassettes. Of these, the most commercially successful is Ladoongay, a collection of wedding songs. In this album, Nooral sings traditional ditties that were rapidly being forgotten by the younger Baloch generation. He collected these songs from old women and rendered them in an up-beat tempo, accompanied by modern musical instruments. The popularity of this cassette is obvious from the fact that young Baloch girls-especially those from Karachi, who had become accustomed to singing Urdu wedding songs-have now turned to the Ladoongay numbers of their elders.
Nooral’s singing has managed to revive a part of Baloch cultural heritage, giving new life to traditional songs, which were rarely heard. Another example of this kind of effort is the case of classical Baloch love stories which are preserved in long verses. These poems are still performed by traditional singers of Balochistan, called Pahalwans, in the classical style. But their archaic and difficult tune, combined with the obsolete diction of the verses, had made them almost unintelligible to the younger generation. Nooral recorded a few of these songs, especially poems about the most popular and mystical romantic couple, Hani and Sheh Mureed. Setting these old poems to new tunes, he breathed a new soul into their verses.
To unearth classical poetry Nooral has had to carry out painstaking research. For example, he found seven different versions of the legendary lovers, Keyya and Sadu’s ‘teetanali’ from different parts of Balochistan. Putting all of these together, he selected common themes among them, and compiled eight different versions of the legend, which he then recorded.
The earlier part of Nooral’s career saw him working in the Gulf, making sporadic visit to Pakistan to do recordings and give performances. Unable to balance both worlds indefinitely, Nooral has now returned to Pakistan and taken up singing full-time. He has also set up an organization, the Baloch Musical and Cultural welfare Society (BMCWS), which has held one function already and has planned several they for the future. Explaining the need for its establishment, Nooral laments the apathy of government of Pakistan institutions like Quetta TV and Radio, and the Balochistan Academy, which are meant to promote Balochi culture.
