Setting muse to music

Asif Noorani discusses the link between music and poetry at the Karachi Literature Festival.

KARACHI: “One of the worst things that could have happened to poetry was Amitabh Bachan. All of a sudden, action came into the forefront and romance took the backseat,” says Asif Noorani, newspaper and television writer, while conducting a 50 minute session on Setting Muse to Music.

Noorani proceeded to discuss the link between music and poetry and stated that two forms of music are popular in Pakistan, namely, instrumental and lyrical and recent times have brought the oral tradition of poetry, be it Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai or Keith Douglas, to gain a lot of popularity.

There are a few poets such as Mirza Ghalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz who have undoubtedly gained immense recognition but simultaneously, there are still a number of poets, who have not been recognised.

Fortunately or unfortunately, music has always been more popular. A lot of poetry would otherwise have gone unrecognised had it not been converted into music, and this has helped poetry gain immense popularity. Following the same trend, film songs have proved to be beneficial because they have made the Urdu language more popular.

Music by Mehdi Hasan and Faraz was also played for the audience at the session and artiste Sheema Kermani read poetry excerpts by Faiz Ahmed Faiz ending the session with the recitation of an English poem on Spain.

At the end of the session an interesting discussion followed on how modern song lyrics have changed and whether they are still as powerful and meaningful as they used to be.

The audience remained divided on the subject as some believed that one of the reasons for this could be because the meaning of the words ‘love’ and ‘romance’ have changed while others thought that the meaning hasn’t really changed; it is the perspective which has been altered to create a parallel train of thought.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 6^th, 2011.