It is night and I am listening to Abida Parveen as it rains outside here at Chicago. And she sings the songs of Sufis -who sung these verses out in outbursts of madness and esctasy! And even my ache that comes when I find it hard to write poetry has vanished.

Here are some notes on Abida's album 'Mere Dil Se' (From My Heart) :

"Here are but a few half-opened flowers plucked from the rose garden of the Tariqab (mystic way). Here is grace, which has been bestowed by someone’s enriching glance, and I do not claim that it is for me to bestow the grace on others in turn. Rather, it is the expression of one’s humble allegiance to the Masters who live in a state of ecstacy." That is Sufi doyenne Begum Abida Parveen describing this album in which she has embraced poetry from Sufi and Sindhi mystics like Wasif Ali Wasif whose Main Nara-e-Mastana glorifies the moment when there is no difference between God and his follower.

According to Sufi belief, the state of ecstasy lies in between absorption into the divine (Jazb) and reaching out for the divine (Salook). The man who lives in a state of ecstasy finds himself in a mode where wonder and consciousness exist side by side, where madness intermingles with awareness.

And these are some rough translations I wrote down as I was listening to her renditions of Kabir:

If I sleep, I meet him in my dreams. If I wake, he fills my waking heart.

How strange is this comfortable world! It eats and sleeps. While Kabir, his servant, wakes and weeps!

Don't ask of the wise man his caste and creed. Instead beg him to grant you his knowledge.

With what face should I plead to him When I am ashamed of what I see in the mirror.

Intimacy is spoken through the language of the heart. In the company of those distant from the heart, One suffers the pain of a captive.

~ Rumi

The synthesis of two great cultures, India and Persia, took place thousands of years ago. Their common roots – the Indo-Persian language, the oldest Persian religion – Mithraism and their related myths, plus many aspects of their social and spiritual lives – have inextricably bound these two cultures together.

At the turn of 13th century a number of Sufi scholars, among them the Persian poet, historian and musician, Amir Khusrau, had a profound influence on classical music of North India. From Amir Khusaru’s time until well into the Mughal period foreign music, particularly Persian, was commonly heard at the Indian courts. Khusrau was a great innovator and is popularly credited with the introduction of a number of Persian elements into Indian music, including vocal forms (qawwali and tarana), ragas and talas, and musical instruments such as the sitar and tabla.

The most important advances in Indian music were made between the 14th and 18th centuries. During this period, Hindustani music came into contact with Persian music and assimilated it through the Pathan and Mongol invasions. At the same time, Persian music experienced a great transformation from the Maqam to the Dastgah system. Although there exist common features of Hindustani Raga and Persian Dastgah, the two can be clearly delineated from one another. In this respect, the Dastgah and the Raga must be considered as two different systems, which have been formed by the social and cultural aspects of their people. These two independent musical fields represent the Indic tradition with their Raga system, and the Near and Middle Eastern world with their Maqam and Dastgah systems.

A Dastgah is a collection of melodic forms (Gushehs), which create the repertory of Iranian classical music or Radif. The Radif is organized into 12 modes, 7 primary and 5 secondary, which are named after the principal and primary melodic phrase called Darmand. The intervallic structure within a Dastgah, and sometimes even within a Gusheh, is varied. The Dastgah and its constituent Gushehs provide a framework for creative improvisation and composition. The Radif includes more than four hundred Gushehs. The number of Gushehs in a Dastgah varies between fifteen and forty or more. Traditionally a performer may choose some six to ten Gushehs in one performance. In comparison to Hindustani music, where modulation doesn’t occur, changing modes is feasible within the boundary of a Dastgah.

The Raga forms the backbone of Indian classic music. A Raga is a melodic structure with a basic scale of seven notes with five basic accidentals and up to twenty-two microtonal forms. Every Raga must have at least five notes and can have up to twelve. Ragas using the same basic scale may be differentiated by different vadi (dominant note) or samvadi (sub dominant note), which are emphasized in the development of the Raga. Melodic ornamentation is complex and essential, and also employs microtonal fluctuations on selected pitches. Hundreds of Raga exist today, sometimes in different forms and different traditions (gharanas).

Both Indian and Persian classical music is characterized by its microtonal and monophonic structure and by its dependence on improvisation. In each of these traditions, a master musician uses a primary melodic form as a base for improvising. There are many factors involved in a musicians’ understanding of and approach to music. Each musician’s schooling (the Indian gharana and Iranian maktab), personal style, technical ability and vision have great impact on their approach to developing their musical ideas. This makes every performance, even of the same Raga or Dastgah, exciting, fresh and unpredictable every time it is performed.

From the liner notes of Ghazal – Lost Songs of The Silk Road, Indian and Persian Improvisations, featuring Kayhan Kalhor on Kamancheh (Iranian spike fiddle), Sujaat Hussian Khan on Sitar (Indian long necked fretted lute), Swapan Chaudhuri on Tabla (Indian hand drums).

I am pausing from wrestling with mathematical expressions – the sum of the job I have to do to keep my work afloat. However I am also listening to John McLaughlin jam his mofo electric guitar with Zakir Hussian’s tabla, The sound rises as a pot rises out of red clay. See the hands pull on the frets, see the hand pull and tease that pot’s neck. It is becoming longer and longer, you hold you breath knowing that it might just break and collapse on itself, but no it doesn’t. It goes on, it is stretched, stretching your skin too in the process. What a miracle is this! You become hollow, a drum, a dhol, a marimba. The thwack of your palm trying to keep the beat on the wood of the table. Tahk tahk din din, your blood beats as it runs up and down the body. It screams, it is orgasmic, it is annihilation, it is OM, it is the fucking Big Bang. It is only a simpleton full of hunger and desire but it is surely better that your brain that thinks and thinks, and that consequently is trapped in itself.

You know some tricks to escape it and one is this what you are now doing, beating the keys as you see the letters run off at the other end, sewage, pure nonsense, kindling for fires. Still this is the vitamin C you need, you don’t care if for someone else finds what is produced, to be caviar or clay. Yet sometimes you shouldn’t try to explain yourself, even to yourself. Look at this flower, this Japanese magnolia, when you plucked it last evening, it was a closed fist, as soft and secretive as a breast And in a night it has begun unfurling into a vertical galaxy of beauty, a ear holding an echo of some sound that is so pure that it requires one to invent an language to write about it. But will the flower care to explain itself? No, never! All it knows is to open itself to the sun, to the air and then rot. How different are you? Not very different, the same five elements compose you, yet how little like this flower you unravel!

Why this difference? The lack of steadiness of purpose, on not allowing the inner drum beat rise to the surface in all these mad races you run to and fro? All this ugliness to make some one like you because you don’t want to hear what you should hear the most clearly? Just stop. Become a violin, become the wood of the violin, be the sea, be a rock, be the seasons, be the cardinals that greet you every morning, be this joy, be these tears that are falling in this moment, be the very breath whose vibration is what all music is, just be.