By Madan Gopal Singh -Jalandhar-2010.JPG

An image grab of Jyoti from a video on the internet. 2010. Photographer unknown

J yoti Nooran is amazing. What a singing voice she is blessed with. How lovely she appears when she sings. There is her great grandmother Nooran in her genes. Jyoti has two things which none of her contemporaries has - the clarity of diction and the way she imbues it with such self-assured yet gentle sense of timing. The tonal quality of Jyoti Nooran reminds one of the quintessential Mirasi voice that only Doaba can produce. The presentation - clips posted on Youtube by Toronto-based Visions of Punjab* - is so irretrievably steeped in kitsch - every thing from set to the keyboard to the poem and yet what a voice! What a rising! But nothing else matters. She is too much. A singer in Delhi is in depression after listening to her. And Jyoti would be infra dig for another well-known singer there. It will take them a life to sing like her - the way she times each word, the way she carries of almost unseen murkis - these two prima donnas will never be able to do that. We hope Jyoti will keep it up. Remember the child prodigy ‘Master’ Saleem? He is almost lost now in the ‘Bollywood’ wilderness. Though he was never on this page. -