Noor Ahmed Janjhi’s book Fragrance of Thari Folk Songs called ‘gift for 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 explained how Janjhi gave a gift every year on his birthday to Sindhi Literature. He said that “Fragrance of Thari Folk Songs” is primary research work, and in our universities, secondary research is conducted. Academically, he says, our social science research builds on research that has already been done.

In his book, Janjhi had made a classification of the Thar language, its people and their ways of life. He described the book as nothing less than a doctoral work. Tharparkar, he said, was not a word; there are four different areas in Thar – a sandy area, a hilly area, a swamp which is Rann of Kutch and then there is a rocky area.

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

There are some songs whose periods Janjhi also mentioned, and the wording of these songs indicates the period. “This book is not the research work of an ordinary scholar. It’s not just a research but a critical analysis of Thar’s songs,” he said.

There are songs about rain and rain-related cultures in the book. Apart from these songs and poems of a Thar girl who is married to a distant family and when the girl misses her family in Thar, Janhi also talked about the behavior of the people of Thar. This book is an impressive thesis on which more work could be done, remarked Mirani.

Another speaker, Jaffar Ahmed, said Janjhi is a highly educated person. In his book, he explained how people once lived, what they thought about, what the level of poverty was at that time. He said that poetry and songs cannot be separated from each other. Shah Abdul Latif, he said, turned poetry into music and music into poetry.

In this book, he says, there will be mountains, rains, famine and much more. In the book, it is mentioned how a season can impact the behavior of human beings. There will be stories about sibling love in the book. In all these stories there are folk songs. In an agricultural society, how a human behaves. Various dimensions of cultures can be seen in the book. “All these cultural dimensions are mixed in the city, they have added value,” he said.

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