I am still mourning the death of Mehnaz Begum, one of the most accomplished women playback singers of Pakistan. She spent her last years trapped in a spiral of ill-health, loneliness and oblivion that sapped her will to live. Few singers have been gifted with a voice as melodious as Mehnaz's, and even fewer have been written off at the height of their career, as happened to her.

Born with a mellifluous voice, Mehnaz endeavored untiringly to acquire perfection in her employment of notes, gain command over rhythm and expand her voice range. Painstakingly groomed to sing Purbi songs carrying a strong folk accent with the discipline of classical tradition, and chanting dirges around the tragedy of Karbala, she amazingly excelled at playback singing for up-town heroines in Pakistani films of the 1970s and 80s. Supported by an innate vocal expressiveness, she exuded romantic sweetness and existential sadness. As if all of this was not enough, she also created a niche for herself in ghazal singing in the presence of giants like Noor Jahan, Iqbal Bano and Farida Khanum.

Born in the early 1950s in a line of hereditary songstresses, known for their recitation of marsiya (elegiac poems) and soz khwani (lamentations), Mehnaz received initial training in music from her mother Kajjan Begum (d. Feb 2000), herself a distinguished singer and soz khwan.

The traditional rendition of marsiya and soz khwani involves singing of poetic content without instrumental or rhythmic support, but a group of accompanying vocalists hums along the lead singer, maintaining emphasis in the ground notes of the composition and producing a drone-like effect that helps the lead singer to stay on her pitch. The absence of rhythmic support in soz khwani does not become conspicuous as the structure of composition intrinsically retains a tempo. Mehnaz, a gifted voice with a rigorous initiation in this type of singing, was bound to master whatever she chose to sing.

Mehnaz made her debut as an amateur singer at Radio Pakistan, Karachi, in 1973. It was a singing competition organized by Bazm e Talaba, a popular radio show for students that in retrospect contributed immensely to Pakistan's cultural life by chartering the careers of many writers, poets, and singers. Mehnaz attended the contest as a consequence of a last-minute change owing to one of the participants falling sick. Her teacher wasn't sure whether Mehnaz, a shy and quiet person, would be able to perform before an audience. But when the compere invited her to sing, Mehnaz confidently walked up to the microphone and started Masroor Anwar's famous national song Aye watan kay sajeelay jawano, originally sung by Noor Jahan. Her rendition brought a pin-drop silence to the tightly packed studio, and when she ended there was thunderous applause. Saleem Gilani, a great music producer, was present at the occasion and immediately extended his patronage.

At Radio Pakistan Karachi, she was placed under the tutelage of Pandit Ghulam Qadir, an eminent composer (and elder brother of Mehdi Hassan) who recorded her first song Bolay ray papiha. Ameer Imam, a producer at Pakistan Television, heard the song and invited her to sing for TV, where she recorded four songs for composer Sohail Rana's programme Naghma Zaar. The next offer came from the music director A. Hameed, who signed her for recording a song for Hassan Tariq's film Jahez (1974).

The early 1970s was a time when Pakistan's film industry was suffering from an acute shortage of women playback singers whose voices could suit the popular personae of Shabnam and Babra Sharif, the popular film heroines of Urdu-language cinema. Top crooner Runa Laila had just migrated to Bangladesh and the youthfulness in the voice of Mala was fading out. The evergreen Noor Jahan was very much on the scene but was mostly devoted to Punjabi film songs. Mehnaz came just in time, with her strong credentials, to fill in this vacuum.

After a brief phase of settling down in the Lahore-based film industry, she was able to attract the attention of filmmakers and offers started pouring in. Within the next four years she became the most sought-after voice for film-score composers, right from Master Inayat, Master Abdhullah, Nisar Bazmi and Khawaja Khurshid Anwar to Robin Gohsh and Kamal Ahmed.

Nisar Bazmi's composition of Mera pyar tere jeevan ke sang rahega for film Pehchan (1975), Robin Gosh's Mujhe dil say na buhlana for film Aina (1977), Kamal Ahmed's Tere mere pyar ka aisa naata hai for film Salakhain (1977) and Master Abdullah's Ye safar tere mere pyar ka for film Sheeshay Ka Ghar (1978), were all sung by Mehnaz and made her a household name across Pakistan.

Legendary music director Khawaja Khurshid Anwar was so enamored by her talent that he went to record seven songs in her voice for film Haider Ali (1978). Asif Noorani recalls that when director Masood Pervez needed seven solos for his film Insaan (1977), he engaged seven leading composers to record one song each in her voice.

Mehnaz was at her best when paired with Mehdi Hassan to sing duets. Later, she sang duets with Noor Jehan and Naheed Akhtar too. Perhaps no other singer had recorded so many duets with as many singers, both men and women, as Mehnaz did. The popular appeal of her voice even compelled Punjabi film directors to sign her on for their films. Language could have been a barrier for someone born and bred in an environment where Urdu and Purbi were spoken, but Mehnaz showed amazing dexterity in neutralizing her Urdu accent in singing Punjabi songs. The prosody of her Punjabi songs doesn't even slightly hint at her non-Punjabi origin.

Mehnaz, straightforward and blunt, never had a quarrel with Noor Jahan. She never talked about machinations by the senior crooner to throw her out of the film industry, an allegation very often made against the former by other singers. Rather, she enjoyed a cordial relationship with Noor Jahan. In one of her interviews, Mehnaz recalled that "Madam kept a certain distance with the younger artistes. She wanted respect from us, which we gave willingly. Once we sang a Punjabi song in which there was a line in which I had to say 'I will slap you', but I just was not able to sing that line however much I tried. The recording would stop each time we came to that portion and I would not budge. When everyone was at their wits end Madam took me aside and lovingly said, 'It is only a song, you are not actually saying it to me.' So I put a paper in front of me so that I couldn't see her and sang the line. It was a hilarious situation."

Over her life, Mehnaz received several prestigious awards. She was the only singer who received Nigar Award (best women singer category), the most prestigious mark of recognition for showbiz in Pakistan, for nine years with seven in a row. In an interview during the last years of her life when the interviewer mentioned her awards, she quipped that "awards get scrapped and benefits are taken away."

Right from the start of her career, it was hard for Mehnaz to put herself in one genre. In the late 70s, while continuing as a playback singer, she decided to sing ghazal, which was the most popular song genre among the cultivated elites. For learning the mannerism of ghazal singing, she took lessons from Ustad Nazar Hussain, the noted ghazal composer of the day. Once she was confident of her ability to do justice to this genre, she went for recording and executed a delightful repertoire that included Ghalib, Iqbal, Sufi Tabassum, Faraz and others. A collection of her ghazal songs, selected from the archives of Radio Pakistan, released by Shalimar Recording and Broadcasting Company, is one of the best specimens of her stylish rendition of ghazal song.

Her popular ghazal repertoire include Zahir ki aankh se na tamasha karay koi (Iqbal), Rang baataen karayen aur baton say khushboo aaye (Zia Jalandhari), Hazar gardish-e-sham-o-sahar se guzray hain (Sufi Tabassum), Sab kahan kuch lala-o-gul mein numayaan ho gayeen (Ghalib) and Ab kay tajdeed-e-wafa ka nahi imkaa'n jana (Faraz).

Traditional Purbi compositions and Amir Khusrau's poetic expressions remained a passion for Mehnaz. Even during her busiest days as a playback singer, she continued singing these compositions in these genres for radio and television. Her excellent rendition of Kahe ko beyahi bades and Chhaap tilak sub chheen lee for Pakistan Television went a long way in reviving popular interest in traditional songs.

For years, every Muharram, Pakistan Television recorded marsiya and soz khwani with Kajjan Begum in the lead and Mehnaz along Ishrat Jahan and Shameem Bano, her maternal aunts, joining as humnawa (accompanists). Kajjan Begum personified the enduring grace of Avadh, once a center of the poetic and performing arts nurtured by a string of Muslim rulers and ruined by a vengeful British crown in 1857. Just as religious fervour in Avadh created marsiya for poetry, so it created soz khwani for music. Traditionalists like Afsurdah, Gada, and Nazim Lucknawi popularized the art of marsiya khwani and paved the way for its refinement as a musical genre.

Kajjan Begum, born as Hussain Baandi in pre-partitioned India in UP, grew up in Mahmoodabad, where her mother Imam Bandi was under the patronage of the house of Raja sahib of Mahmoodabad for chanting elegies during the holy month of Muharram. Since the establishment of State of Oudh (1722) to its annexation to British India in 1858, the women in the ancestral family of Imam Bandi had remained in the employment of the Royal Palace as songstresses for women quarters. These women were principally employed for marsiya khwani, which existed as an indigenous musical and literary genre prior to the eighteenth century. Besides marsiya khwani these women were adept at singing thumri, tappa, dadra, hori and chaiti.

Imam Bandi excelled in singing Purbi folk songs, which have become a part of the light classical music of North India. Often she was invited to sing at marriage and birth celebrations of the Muslim nobility. Michael S. Kinnear's 'The Gramaphone Company's First Indian Recordings, 1899-1908' lists the name of Imam Bandi as one of the many songstresses who were recorded by Kinnear.

Kajjan Begum started singing along with her mother at a very young age. Besides soz hhwani, she would sing thumris, kajris and dadras in the Banaras ang or style. Her husky voice and exotic Purbi style of rendition attracted quite a following in undivided India. She flourished at Lucknow, Benaras, Calcutta and Patna. In the early 1950s, she migrated to Pakistan with her family and brought with her a treasure trove of Hindi songs and poetic expressions, many of which are ascribed to Amir Khusrau. She along with her younger sisters Ishrat Jahan and Shamim Banu helped sustain the family tradition. According to one researcher, Kajjan's rendition of Khusrau's banra (song to tease the bride-groom), babul (sung to the bride departing from her father's home) and sawan (dialogue between a married daughter and mother about the rainy season) could arguably be the last authentic versions of such a repertoire in South Asia.

Kajjan Begum's death in 2000 was a great shock for Mehnaz, who always cherished her as a sort of deity. She found herself lonely in a world where things were changing very fast. Not only was the number of films annually produced in Pakistan on decline but also the level of appreciation of music. The new breed of music directors was more interested in loud, bland music. She turned bitter in her expressions and became unhappy with the industry. This negatively impacted her relations with the industry, which took no time in abandoning her. Finally, she bid adieu to playback singing in 2001 after having recorded songs for approximately 300 Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi films. With a revived vigor, she focused on performances for radio, television and stage shows at home and abroad. Sometimes, if she liked, she would also lend her voice to the theme song for a television drama.

But as luck would have it, she developed a respiratory ailment around the middle of the last decade, which would often take her to the USA for treatment where her siblings were settled. On January 19th, 2013, she died on her way to the States in Bahrain.

I think it was in 1993 that I had the opportunity of interviewing Mehnaz for Radio Pakistan. She was in Islamabad for a concert organized by the National Council of the Arts. We sat outside the auditorium of Allama Iqbal Open University and talked about her music and her family. Appreciating my understanding of the social context in which her mother and grandmother performed, she confided in me that she had represented the seventh generation of a family dedicated to the musical tradition of Avadh over a period of about three hundred years. Alas, with the death of Mehnaz, a glorious family of songstresses of the Avadhi tradition has come to an end.

Comments (1 comments)

Thank for an excellent homage to Mehnaz and her mother Kajjan Begum. I had the honor to hear Kajjan begun live during the sixties and seventies. Both Mom and daughter were great artist and a talent, that rises only after many generation. May their soul rest in piece, Amen.

Posted: Tuesday, February 05, 2013 by Abbas Jafry from Toronto Canada