At one time, I wrote poetry. While I enjoyed wordsmithing and using image and metaphor to bring out beauty and joy, and pain and suffering, the form that I really loved to work with was the sonnet. I really enjoyed trying to fashion words into the required form - getting the meter right, making rhymes work, and coming up with a theme or topic that could coherently fit the sonnet's structure. And I was relatively good at it, as far as I went with it. I won an award in college for a set of three poems I wrote, one of which was a sonnet, and over the years I occasionally pick up my pencil and try my hand again.
Today's tune, Vo Kuch, reminds me of my efforts at poetry because it is a ghazal sung beautifully by Kiran Ahluwalia. A ghazal is an ancient Arabic form of poetry, originating in the 6th century, and has a strict structure that recalls to mind the requirements of a sonnet, particularly in its meter, rhyming couplets and a refrain. Just as a sonnet was demonstrated to be a wonderful form to express the joy and beauty, sadness, pain and suffering of love, a ghazal traditionally expresses the pain that comes from loss of love or separation and the beauty in that pain. I do enjoy the beauty of melancholy, and a ghazal seems to be very at home in that sweet sadness.
For me, the most accomplished poetry sounds like music when you hear it. A year or so ago I was reminded of that when I went to hear local Albuquerque poets Hakim Bellamy and Carlos Contreras perform their show Urban Verbs. As they shared poems drawing upon their experiences as minorities in America and their hip-hop and rap influences, they brought the words alive in such a way that it was almost like being at a concert. I also feel that the best musicians, especially singer-songwriters, make their music sound like poetry. A well-crafted song brings together so many elements into harmony, including instrumentation, rhythm and lyrics, that when they all fit together you describe the musician as a poet. There are a few musicians that I've considered to be the poets of their craft and nearly always their songs bring me to a higher plane of awareness and understanding.
While I don't understand the lyrics as Ms. Ahluwalia sings them and can only rely on a translation, I can hear the sweet sadness of her words and her music, and I feel like I'm experiencing the ghazal:
He has completely gripped my emotions
as if taken hold of my thoughts.
On the path of love I tread alone
so I can save him the anguish.
Rumour has it that he has fallen out with my rivals.
This has brightened my light of hope.
Tahira why should I complain against the world
when I can myself bear this grief happily.
Kiran Ahluwalia not only only sings ghazals, she also performs Punjabi folk songs. She was born in India, raised in Canada and now lives in New York City. She immersed herself in Indian classical music and ghazals from age seven and spent a decade of deep and intense study with her guru in the 1990s. Her music has developed and provided innovation of the ghazal music genre, often through the introduction of non-traditional instrumentation and styles such as the Portuguese fado guitar, sub-Saharan percussion, Celtic fiddle, Pakistani qawwali vocals, Afghani rhubab and African blues. She has also collaborated with other world artists such as Rez Abbasi, Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq and electronica group Delerium. Vo Kuch is from her eponymous 2009 release, and can also be found on the compilation album Putumayo Presents: India.
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