'Sur Sorath' by Mitha Khan, Sumar Kadu, & Jaan Mohammad

In the haunting verses of 'Sur Sorath', Shah Latif casts the musician Beejal as the 'murshid', the guru who demands nothing less than the head, even when the disciple is the mighty King of Junagadh, Rai Diach. In Latif's rendering of this popular Sindhi folk tale, music becomes a force that penetrates all fortresses and compels the powerful to put their ego aside and surrender to the greater truth. No wonder then that this Sur comes alive in the musical form of the waai. If one were to imagine a form that might best capture a conversation between seeker and God, this might be it. No weary preliminaries, no pretty embellishments. The waai is a kind of a visceral cry, a weeping, a lament. Waai uses two kinds of voices – the heavy (gauro) and the thin (sanho). The ‘heavy’ is the normal male pitch of singing, but it is this falsetto sanho that strikes the chord of separation – for it is a kind of shriek, or 'loolaat' – a baby’s howl for its mother. Full-grown men weeping in the voice of a child… *** Mitha Khan and Sumar Kadu and the late Jaan Mohammad belong to the village of Bhagadia in Kutch, Gujarat, and are descendants of the Jat Muslims from Baluchistan who traversed the rugged terrain and colossal distances through Sindh and brought this invaluable genre to Kutch in Gujarat. Contact Mitha Khan Jat at +91-94269-69447 and Sumar Kadu Jat at +91-94293-41481 (Click on Settings for Sindhi subtitles in Devanagari script ) Find lyrics/translation of this song at https://ajabshahar.com/songs/details/... Ajab Shahar is a digital archive of mystic poetry and music drawing from the rich Bhakti and Sufi oral traditions in India and beyond... Explore a world of sung and spoken wisdom at https://ajabshahar.com *** Song Credits: Vocals & Dhambura: Mitha Khan Jat, Sumar Kadu Jat & (late) Jaan Mohammad Translation: Shabnam Virmani & Vipul Rikhi Video Credits: Cameras: Shabnam Virmani & Avanti Sadhu Editing: Piyush Kashyap Sound: PM Satheesh & team, Fireflys Post-Sound Recording Facilitation & Support: Deval Mehta & Survaani, Kutch Sub-Titling: Prashant Parvataneni Collection: The Kabir Project Place of Recording: Shaam-e-Sarhad, Hodka, Gujarat, Kutch, India Date of Recording: June, 2010