“The sisters haven’t arrived yet,” we’re informed on phone by their manager, as we reach an hour before the show at Prabhadevi’s cultural centre — Ravindra Natya Mandir. It’s a Baisakhi celebration event organised by Punjab Association, and Nooran sisters — Jyoti Nooran and Sultana Nooran, arguably the best and the most original talent to have come from Punjab in recent years – are about to perform here. The evening is being promoted as their ‘maiden performance’ in the city — simply because its only them performing this night. The last time the sisters performed in the city, in October 2016, they were a part of the line-up of a nascent folk-music festival.
It’s the sunset hour of a Tuesday; audiences have started coming in — mostly Punjabi families — but the show is delayed by around three hours (and so is this interview). “They had planned an interval in between the show. I had to tell them that it is a Sufi show, it runs without a break. This last minute schedule change caused the delay,” their manager Kunal Passi, who is also Jyoti’s husband, explains to us. Finally, we go inside the greenroom, to meet the sisters, minutes before they are set to go on the stage.
Tranquillity and focus
The little room is bustling with people: organisers, family, friends and a crying baby. And amidst all the chaos, the singing girls are sitting right in the centre, with little privacy, and in silence so stoic that they look almost unapproachable. Are they nervous? “A little nervous and a little tense,” says the younger one, Jyoti. “Tensed [up] that the show must go well and we get a good response from the audience.” She is quick to add: “Though, obviously, it has never happened that the response is not good.” Thankfully, they both smile now.
Doing live shows, like these, for the Nooran sisters is their major musical avenue, where, among other Sufi compositions, they also perform songs by their grandmother Bibi Nooran and their mentor-father Gulshan Mir. They don’t need special rehearsals for live shows; their daily riyaaz is enough. On performing in Mumbai, Jyoti says, “There’s a whole film industry in Bombay, everyone is so talented. I would say we know nothing, we are zero. It’s not that we learn today and we are Khan Saab tomorrow. We only learn, and will only learn as long as we live.”
Mir has been training them, under the Sham Chaurasia gharana, since they were five and seven years old respectively. Was their father too a hanikarak bapu ? They haven’t seen the film I am referring to ( Dangal ), despite the fact, that they have a song in it (‘ Idiot Banna ’), but speaking about mentorship from their father, Sultana, now 24, says, “He concentrates on each and every lafaz (word) very minutely.” To which, Jyoti adds, “No other guru would teach you for this long.”
In the limelight
The story of musician Sneha Khanwalkar spotting the sisters and putting them into national limelight with the MTV SoundTrippin’ song ‘Tung Tung’ later used in the 2015 film Singh Is Bliing is a well known one. The duo though was not completely away from limelight before that. Doordarshan Punjabi had them on a show Jashan Di Raat in 2005; Jyoti was a contestant on a singing show Nikki Awaz Punjab Di on Punjabi channel MH1 in 2007. Crossing regional barriers, Jyoti has now even sung one song in Tamil. She corrects me: two, not one. Both for composer D Imman, in Bogan (2017) and Paayum Puli (2015). “I didn’t even know the language is Tamil. I wrote the lyrics in Hindi. Had to convolute my mouth to sing them,” she laughs.
Midway during the interview, the baby in the room cries even louder. Sultana takes him – he’s her son – and finds a corner to feed him. Jyoti is fiddling with her phone; she shows me a photograph of hers with her husband — like every newly married young couple, they are in love. We talk about her marriage that was widely reported in 2014 as she had to fight a legal battle to recognise her marital bond. Has her courageous stand inspired others in her neighbourhood or family? “Many girls do try. Riyaaz jari hai ,” she says.
Harmony forever
Their voices have same timbre but slightly different tenor, but the sisters flow together so well that it’s hard to recognise which voice is whose when they sing. “It’s only when we talk, one can figure,” shares Jyoti. How do they decide who will take which part of the song to sing? Jyoti continues, “We don’t have to argue on that front. It’s our father who decides.”
Zee Music has recently launched their private album, Kamli . Do they listen to new Bollywood songs? They look at each other and Jyoti makes a ‘no’ face. They listen to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Kishore Kumar and the other famous singer sisters Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle in their free time.
And the song they enjoy performing onstage? ‘ Allah Hoo ’, which they also performed in Coke Studio @ MTV Season 2, and are about to sing shortly at the Baisakhi evening.
Sultana makes sure to tell me their favourite song, “This is always asked in an interview to us, if not, we tell them. It’s when we sang for the film Highway . The song was finalised but we kept playing the song — ‘ Patakha Guddi ’ — in the studio and were dancing to it. We enjoyed that recording like a live show.”
That was their first Bollywood break, and it was with none other than A. R. Rahman. It was then, that the sisters had truly arrived.
