So my friend gave me a whole bunch of Abida Parveen songs. Her voice is amazing and goes very few voices go. The untrained ear may confuse her voice with that of man, but be ye not mistaken! And that's one of the amazing and mesmerizing qualities of hers.
While there are twenty songs on the CD my friend gave me, I can only listen to one. It is absolutely captivating and the ideal embodiment of the perfect qawwali and/or ghazal. Chappa tilak sab cheeni re tose naina milayee ke means "You've taken away my looks, my identity just by a glance". Even though I didn't know what the song meant when I first listened to it, I knew it meant something beautiful -- that's almost a given with qawwalis and ghazals. However, it was the music that is enrapturing! The song starts off slowly, but she starts speeding up and then it's just like a thrilling car ride down the Meadowbrook Parkway!
I think this is Amir Khusrau's most famous song. Considering that Khusrau lived in the late 13th and early 14th centuries and is sometimes called the "Father of Qawwali", I guess it may be expected that this song lasted for seven hundred years. What's interesting about some of his songs is that they are also written in the woman's perspective. I'm curious as to why a man would write in a woman's perspective. It's hilarious that gender-bending is such a tabboo nowadays, but back then, it seemed to be extremely common.
And I guess Abida is carrying on his tradition of gender-bending in her own way.
