Noor Ahmed Janjhi’s book Fragrance of Thari Folk Songs termed ‘a gift to Sindhi literature’

The Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences held a session on Thari folk songs on Friday and discussed Noor Ahmed Janjhi’s book titled ‘Fragrance of Thari Folk Songs’.

Speaking on the book, Dr Sher Mirani discussed how Janjhi gave a gift every year on his birthday to Sindhi literature. He said that ‘Fragrance of Thari Folk Songs’ is a primary research work, and in our varsities secondary research is conducted. Academically speaking, he said, our researches on social sciences are based on already conducted researches.

In his book, Janjhi had done classification of Thar’s language and its people and their lifestyles. He described the book as no less than a PhD work. Tharparkar, he said, was not one word; there are four different areas in Thar -- a sandy area, a hilly area, marsh land which is Rann of Kutch and then there is a rocky area.

Mirani appreciated the author’s work on folk songs of Thar. He explained how Janjhi had dedicated this book to various anonymous Thari poets. “There are poets of Thar who have contributed to Thar literature but haven’t taken any credit,” he said, adding that the author had mentioned their works in this book.

There are certain songs of which Janjhi has mentioned time periods as well, and the wording of those songs tell the period. “This book is no research work of an ordinary researcher. This is not only research but a critical analysis of Thar’s songs,” he said.

There are songs on rain and cultures related to rain in the book. Apart from these songs and poems of a girl in Thar who is married off to a family far away and when the girl misses her family back in Thar, Janhi has also touched upon the behaviour of the people of Thar. This book is an impressive thesis on which more work could be done, Mirani remarked.

Another speaker, Jaffar Ahmed, said Janjhi is a very learned person. In his book he has discussed how people in past used to live, what they used to think about, what the level of poverty was in that era. He said that poetry and songs cannot be separated from each other. Shah Abdul Latif, he said, has turned poetry into music and music into poetry.

In this book, he said, there will be mountains, rains, famine and much more. In the book, it is mentioned how one season can impact the behaviour of human beings. There will be stories on the love of brothers and sisters in the book. In all these stories, there are folksongs. In an agriculture society, how a human conducts himself. Various dimensions of cultures can be seen in the book. “All these cultural dimensions are mixed in the city, they have value additions in it,” he said.

From the agriculture society, there comes town planning. These folk songs in the book, he said, shed light on this evolution of the society and then there was a movement from culture towards civilisations. There are many poems on lovers but few on married couples, but in Thari poems they have it on husbands and wives.