Still walking, although the heat (and blistered feet) have kept me in a bit more these last few days; I go out at night, and walk the length of İstiklal Caddesi from Taksim to Tünel, sometimes more than once. While urbanating (to borrow p.b.’s term for it), I’ve been listening particularly to some clips from the Pakistani music show Coke Studio, which has put downloadable audio and video of performances online for free. The music is so good it almost makes me reconsider my surly boycott of Coke products, most of which I don’t like anyway. Szerelem and Ultrabrown linked to these almost simultaneously, and I’ve sent them to several of you via email since. But for the rest, here are my two favorites:
1. Paimana Bideh, by the two-woman band Zeb & Haniya, whose debut album Chup I bought in Lahore last winter–two copies, in fact; one for me and one for my Delhi hosts–and have been enjoying ever since. I like this live rendition of the tune–a lovely Pashto/Dari (i.e, so close to Persian even I can tell) love song–even more than the album version, which is a little slower and sadder (there’s English translation at that link).
2. Aik Alif from the wonderful Saieen Zahoor & Noori. On that same trip, I had dinner with Ali Hamza of Noori and a mutual friend (who introduced me as “a fan of your work,” by which he meant the notorious Bhenchod song–AVT having given me a bootleg recording lo these many years ago, during our first autumn in NYC.) Anyway, it is a pleasure to see them tearing up the screen here, and this lovely interpretation of Bulleh Shah will hopefully garner them less hate mail than the other song did.
I have also been listening to a lot of rebetika, which for is a another post. But it does have me wondering if I should take up Greek next, after Urdu, and save Arabic for another year….
5 Comments
June 24, 2009 at 8:51 pm
[...] walking music « verbal privilege [...]
June 25, 2009 at 8:57 am
too many languages to learn – too much of too much to learn actually. I think that is probably the single driving factor for wanting to do a PhD – the M.Phil is like just scratching the surface.
June 27, 2009 at 2:09 pm
That “Aik Alif” was brilliant – I have been hunting Sain Zahoor all afternoon, to drink and drink some more, thanks to this.
Post some of your Instanbul pictures here too.
June 28, 2009 at 9:07 am
Sashi-jan, I hope you’re going to come walk some of these streets with me one of these days. Photos to come eventually; I have put the camera in manual mode and am teaching myself to use it properly, and the result is that I am presently taking lots of really shitty photographs. But I’m learning, and there are eight weeks more to get it right.
July 9, 2009 at 11:25 am
Paimona Bideh with translation
http://mysticsaint.blogspot.com/2009/07/paimona-bideh-bring-me-chalice.html