NEW YORK: This is with reference to Khaled Ahmed’s article of November 23 titled “Romance of wandering ‘jugni’”.
I offer the following definition and explanation to my students and like it the best: Jugni is an age-old narrative device used in Punjabi folk music and sung at Punjabi weddings in India, US, Canada, Australia and UK. The word literally means ‘Female Firefly’, in folk music it stands in for the poet-writer who uses Jugni as an innocent observer to make incisive, often humorous, sometimes sad but always touching observations. In spiritual poetry Jugni means the spirit of life, or essence of life. The late legendary Alam Lohar (Pakistan Punjab) and late singer and humourist Asa Singh Mastana (Indian Punjab) are credited with popularising this poetry from early Sufi spiritual writings and then subsequently later on it was transformed by other singers as a female girl just like prefixes like ‘Preeto’. Much of early jugni writing is spiritual in nature and relates to one’s understanding of the world and one’s relationship with God. Many poet philosophers have used the jugni device, which is in the public domain, to make social, political or philosophical, often mildly subversive, commentary. Jugni is cross-religious and depending on the writer, invokes the name of God (often using the word “Saeen”, the vernacular word for Lord), Ali or the Gurus. A kernel of truth is an essential and integral part of every jugni composition.
The narrative style relies on jugni landing up unexpectedly in diverse places and, wide-eyed, learning something new. Jugni makes her comments in three or four well-wrought verses which may or may not rhyme but can always be sung in a rudimentary Punjabi folk style. The object could be a city, a state, a market place, a school, a religious place or a saloon, jugni’s non-malicious commentary catches the essence of the place and produces in the listener a chuckle and sometimes a lump in the throat. Alam Lohar is the writer or introducer of this term from reading Baba Bulleh Shah’s writing, in a spiritual sufi theme.
Tahira Naqvi
Lecturer in Middle East and Islamic Studies
New York University
Published in The Express Tribune, November 28th, 2011.
