What can you do but sing? (I)

To understand poor Yunus’ words, 

you have to love very much.

It’s like the language of birds

- what can you do but sing?

Yunus Emre, Hazreleteri

ONE

It was in the middle of a grammar lesson, sitting in a room outside the eastern gate of Damascus’ old city, that I first came to reflect most movingly - most memorably - upon song.

This instance was certainly not the first time I had come across song of spiritual resonance, nor was it my first exposure to song in Arabic. A quest for melody and verse of soul-resonance had strongly characterised my latter teen years. Upon entering adulthood, I had been present and usually participant in a weekly circle of women making dhikr, and singing. Since arriving in Damascus too, I had found myself often a witness in such circles. Yet there was something in the presence of song here in the grammar lesson - where it didn’t yet seem to me to typically belong - that stirred and struck the most memorable chord. This moment of sudden reflection and imperceptible understanding wasn't about the specifics; it wasn’t about training in singing or melody, or choirs, or even the beauty of song or the power of the language. Instead, this was a first sense of wonderment on the possible integrality of song in human life experience. It had been growing upon me with each day of adjusting to life in the city that there had been something amiss in the compartmentalisation of life I had been otherwise accustomed to, where ‘bursting into song’ in the serious business of learning and work, felt odd, uneasy, even comical.

Prior to this instance, I had also studied the Arabic language as an undergraduate student for two years. The experience of studying the language in Damascus, however, had been something else entirely. The sterile analysis of contextless morphology tables on foggy Cambridge mornings was no comparison. Here, instead, the study of grammar was imbued at every turn, every seeming mundanity, every complexity, with verse: always sung, always spontaneous, always entirely fitting. Invariably somewhere in some verse encountered through each day also came a reference (of some variation) to the ‘seed’ of love. These words rapidly became echoing refrains which my ear became accustomed to pick out easily amid other unfamiliar words. At least once a day, then, over the course of a year my ears met song in the humdrum of daily life and learning, and with it, some varying mention of love. This was a combinational immersion that slowly made transformation.

In this particular grammar lesson we had come across a simple adverb - 'ayhyana(n)' - which typically translates to 'sometimes’. It was a common word - obvious, ordinary - and we made it clear that we knew it. Yet the lecturer was drawn to insist that this wasn't to be dismissed so easily as something already known, and that there was no simple meaning here. He was then reminded of an ode and began to sing:

وَالأُذنُ تَعشَقُ قَبلَ العَينِ أَحيانا

Wa-l udhnu ta’shaqu qabla-l-‘ayni ahyana

This translates roughly as ‘sometimes, the ear is in Ishq (a passionate or maddening love) before the eye (has even witnessed)'. What followed this were musings on the psychology of falling in love complemented with examples from the lecturer's own life and loves: real-life illustrations accompanying the suggestion that sound is often a critical opening for engendering love. He noted that this was a commonly known verse dating back to the 8th century, upon which, he added, an ode had been penned by al-Shaykh Salih al-Farfour - the founder of the institute we sat in. The metre and the trope of that familiar classical verse was built upon for this ode to his love of the Beloved Prophet. Once again, then, he began to sing:

أحـيـــانـــا حـبّــك يـا مـخـتــار ُ أحـيــانـــــــا  

وأصـبـح الـحـفـل مـن ذكـراك نشـــــوانــــــا

مـهمـا كتمتُ لظـى شوق يؤرقـنـــــــــي

قــد يـفضـح الـقـلبَ دمـعُ العين أحـيانــــــــا

Ahyana hubbuka ya mukhtaru ahyana

Wa asbaha-l-haflu min dhikraka nashwana

Mahma katamtu ladha shawqin yu'arriquni

Qad yafdahu-l-qalba dam'u-l-'ayni ahyana

This translates very roughly as something like:

Your love brought us to life, O Chosen One,

And the celebration of remembering you became our intoxicating delight

No matter how much I suppress a longing that haunts me,

Sometimes the tears of the eye disclose or give the heart away.

The play on words here - the homophones of ‘to revive’ and ‘sometimes’ as well as the rhythm which connects between them - is of course lost in this very poor attempt at translation. In the moment, though, this instance of song, left layers of something instantly imperceptibly understood. Till today, in coming across or teaching the adverb ‘sometimes’ on the very rudimentary level of vocabulary, these melodies and verses ring in my ears and it is impossible to think of it without them. This lesson was one of many in recognising the Arabic language as the deepest of oceans, learning not to dismiss anything simple or known when knowledge remained yet very limited. Beyond this, the lessons here were multifold: song as inseparable from life, work and learning when one embodies the full human experience at all times; song as a teacher or teaching tool; song as the seed-sower from which love may grow; and song as an outpouring of love when nothing sensible can be conveyed.

I have been drawn to these first lessons in song and love many times since that first instance of wonderment. In earlier years this was typically through witnessing encounters of others moved to love, and thereby to unshakeable understanding, through song. A friend, with no knowledge of Arabic, once told of coming to understand faith and being moved to commit to it simply through chancing upon a recording of the famous Qasidah Burdah - (The Ode of the Prophet's Cloak) - playing on a loop for several days whilst unable to leave a room. When I related this story to someone else, the response was one of incredulousness: 'really, how can it be just from a song'? Another striking moment came some years prior. A friend who had been interested in religion for a while, had learnt the prayer and practiced it for several months, yet without uttering the complete witness statement in the prayer or outside of it. Belief in the unity of God was clear and strong, but it was the second part of the witness statement she didn’t quite get, she would say. One night, I invited her to the gathering I attended where women made remembrance and sang. She participated minimally, until, near the end of the gathering, came the time to sing the Muhammadan Ode. This was a poem of praise containing a mesmerising repetition of this most blessed name: Muhammad. I had once heard a teacher commenting on it saying that the experience of singing this poem was a wonderful example in the psychology of love: the lover never tires of saying the name of the beloved over and over again. It remains the most beautiful sound, and the madness of ishq can certainly move one to repeat a sound captivated. Equally ,the mention of beauty over and over again has an effect: it plants deep within the seed of love. As the blessed poet of the both the Muhammadan Ode and the Mantle Ode says:

مُحَمّدٌ ذِكرُهُ رَوحٌ لِأنفُسِنا

Muhammad - to mention him brings refreshment to our souls

Midway through the rendition sung by the women on this particular night, I looked over at my friend. Eyes closed, she was in tears, repeating aloud just the first word of each line as it came about: Muhammadun. She called later that night to say that she was ready to bear witness, and early next morning made her shahadah. No discussion ensued, no explanation. The simplicity of transformation over the space of an hour was a testament to both song and love - and to the connection between the two.

Earlier this year, I was reminded once again of that Damascene lesson returning to writings of Malwana Abdul Rahman Jami, who observes:

"Sight is not the only way that love finds its route into the heart: it often happens that the echo of beauty entering the ear robs the heart and soul...".

In the near-two decades since that instance of the grammar lessons in Damascus, many first-hand experiential examples have also served as illustrations to that same lesson: the power of song both as a natural outpouring and outlet of love, and a means by which love is engendered and grows - like ‘the seed which grows’ present in the word ‘hubb’. In more recent years, song has been the most constant companion when all else flails or has failed; when words, action, gesture and sensation seem misaligned, amiss and even lost. Then, odes learnt and heard still pour out unconsciously. Sometimes.

Over the years, a growing connection to the need deep within for song has also led to learning harmony, and being in harmony, without trying to do so. An organic attuning of the ear, so to speak. My childhood memories of song involved my grandmother's night-time forlorn lullaby-like melodies in Farsi and Urdu, singing of great lovers of God, guides and teachers, or of the loneliness of the grave. Yet, in spite of this, and despite my quest for seeking songs of soul-resonance as a teenager, I didn’t sing with much beauty and I wouldn't usually sing. As an adult, the experience of devotional singing in a group revealed that, initially, my attuning was poor. I was not a natural singer, nor entirely melodious. I could tell that my voice in the group stuck out. Until, one day, it didn’t. This was soon after my return from Damascus. There was no conscious learning, no training, no thought given to how to sing better, no advice taken. It just happened.

اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَسْأَلُكَ حُبَّكَ وَحُبَّ مَنْ يُحِبُّكَ وَالْعَمَلَ الَّذِي يُبَلِّغُنِي حُبَّكَ

اللَّهُمَّ اجْعَلْ حُبَّكَ أَحَبَّ إِلَيَّ مِنْ نَفْسِي وَأَهْلِي وَمِنَ الْمَاءِ الْبَارِدِ

Listen:

The Muhammadan Ode (Women's Voices)

The Muhammadan Ode (Men's Voices)