Maazdigar sho Lailo, kelai khabar sho Lailo nende wade dai

It has become evening, Lailo. The entire village is aware, Lailo, that today is your wedding day 

Sta pa tama zde me khawre pa sar sho lailoo, nende wade dai

My heart waits for you. Dust fell on my head, Lailo, today is your wedding day

 

Che sta dolai ye pa ma rawde(2)

When they brought your dolai (wooden structure covered by a veil in which the Bride sits and is taken to her new home, lifted by four agnatic kin of the groom)

Leka yatim de dewal khewata wedredema(2)

I stood like an orphan next to the wall [as I watched you go] 

 

Maazdigar sho lailoo, kelai khabar sho lailoo nen de wade dai

It has become evening, Lailo. The entire village is aware, Lailo, that today is your wedding day

Sta pa tama zde me khawre pa sar sho lailoo, nende wade dai

My heart waits for you. Dust upon on my head, Lailo, today is your wedding day

 

Beltoon de shney lakhtey gozaar dai(2)

Seperation is like the pain of a green branch hitting upon me

Rab de jumla musalmanan te wosatina(2)

May God keep the community of Muslims protected [from this kind of pain] 

 

Maazdigar sho lailoo, kelai khabar sho lailoo nende wade dai

It has become evening, Lailo. The entire village is aware, Lailo, that today is your wedding day

Sta pa tama zde me khawre pa sar sho lailoo, nende wade dai

My heart waits for you. Dust upon on my head, Lailo, today is your wedding day

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Week 8: Sufi Piety I – Shaykhs, Pirs, Music, Dance and Poetry

Medium: Song

Qawwali is a musical genre that has manifested from the Sufi tradition in South Asia. The performers sing mystical poetry that comes from the Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Hindi traditions and the music is used by the audience and performers as a form of devotion. Without realizing it, I had already been exposed to Qawwali prior to taking this class. Because of my mother, I grew up listening to a prominent Qawwali performer called Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I would tell people “I love Qawwali!” without really knowing what Qawwali meant. I started to dig farther into my memories to try to think of other mystical music that my mother exposed me too. Many things came to my mind, including last winter when my aunts and my mother sat in the dark with their eyes closed, moving their heads left and right to the sway of the music as they listened to an Irani song. When I asked my aunt what they were singing, she leaned into me, still with her eyes closed and said “Man mastam. Darya mast. Darakhta mast. Hama mast,” which meant: I am intoxicated. The ocean is intoxicated. The trees, intoxicated. Everyone and everything, intoxicated. I nervously laughed at the thought of my pious aunt talking about being intoxicated, not understanding that she was talking about the Sufi kind of “mast”, where everyone and everything is so overwhelmed with love for God that it feels like they are intoxicated. This made me realize that so much of the music I had been exposed to and that is part of my heritage could be considered Qawwali without traditionally being thought of as Qawwali. My mother comes from a nomadic Pashtoon family, and Friday nights for us consist of everyone congregating around a drum to sing traditional folk songs passed down from generation to generation. These folks songs are my Qawwali. For this reason, I chose to sing one of my favorite Pashtoon folk songs within the context of the Qawwali. The song is about someone in the village watching the wedding festivities of the girl he is in love with named Lailo. Lailo is a pashtoon derivative of Laila, a name meaning “night” in Arabic and made famous by the love story Laila Majnun. It is also my name and my cousin’s name. As a joke, we sing this song together while my mother plays the drums and the rest of the family claps their hands rhythmically, very much like how Qawwali performers perform their songs with instruments and clapping. The lyrics of this poem speak most to the type of Qawwali that expresses emotional dimensions of mysticisms in ishq (love), firaq (separation) and wisal (union). The love the singer feels is intense, he says “dust upon my head” that today is your wedding day, speaking of the soil someone throws over your grave once you’re dead like dust on your head. He compares himself to an orphan as he watches her go, signifying how alone he is in this journey for love. When he sings of the separation, he compares it to the pain of someone repeatedly hitting him with a branch that is mockingly green and bright. Here, one can see how this folk song can be interpreted not only as someone longing for their beloved, but someone longing to be reunited with God. He prays that no other Muslim should have to feel the pain of this kind of separation. When he says Muslim here, I believe that the singer speaks not about the Muslim in the traditional sense, but as one who submits to God. He means to say, may God protect anyone who is on this journey of reunion from the pain that it will cause. The pain of this separation is intense, and the wisal (union) seems unlikely as the Bride is being carried to her new home, out of his sight. However, the repeated line about dying reminds the reader that maybe upon death, there will be a reunion with the beloved, and in this case God.