There is a story i remember my father telling me about nusrat fateh ali khan's qawwalis.
At the end of almost every song, the lyrics would be exhausted and the singers would only endlessly sing alaaps. Or sing the same single line over and over, in different new ways.My father said that this signified that whatever could not be explained in words
Could be expressed in music in its purest form.
Music, therefore, has the power to convey what words fail to.
And in sufi qawwalis, this inexplicable zenith of every song was god. Or whatever you call it.
This interesting thought came back to me while listening to Tum Tak from the film Ranjhana. Written by Irshad Kamil and composed by AR Rahman.
The lyrics talk about a lover in complete awe of his object of affection. He says that all of his 'manmani' (stubbornness) exists only 'tum tak' (till you).
In so many words, he talks about how all of his childishness, his cleverness, even his free will ends with her.
The deeply problematic nature of the film aside, the song is about the complete surrender of the self to one's lover.
In many ways, this resembles the sufi idea of complete surrender to the almighty, and seeing him/her/it as the ultimate object of love.
It has echoes of the bhakti that Meera had for Krishna while singing love hymns in his praise.
And, just like those sufi qawwalis from my childhood, the songs ends with the words 'Tum Tak' being repeated over and over again.
But they assume a slightly different meaning here.
The quick repetition of the two words, one after the other, begins to sound like a chant.
The two words dissolve into a musical union, a literal chant.
And not just this, the alliterated sound of 'Tum Tak' also serves as vocal percussion, very much like 'Dhinka Chika', 'Dhoom Taana', 'Dhoom Pichak Dhoom', and 'Dhan Te Nan'.
To me, the song is a unique description of single minded devotion towards one's object of affection (expressed in so many words), reaching a crescendo and ending at its only logical conclusion - complete surrender (expressed in the same words, but now bereft of their literal meaning, reduced - or elevated? - to their musical phonetics).
As the qawwals believe: when words fail, music takes over.
