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PODCAST

Sounding Board

Sounding Board is an audio series about South Asian music, Islamic sound arts and the Urdu literary tradition. It features readings of essays by influential Urdu scholars, musicologists, poets and critics from the 19th and 20th centuries, exploring themes of identity, inheritance and imagination. The project is supported by Columbia University Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities and Humanities New York. Produced by Ali Raj

music music history

All Episodes

00:07:44

The Lullabies of East Pakistan - Nasim Ahmed

Sounding Board ·

2026/01/02

Nasim Ahmed (d. ?) was a writer based in East Pakistan, who frequently contributed to Urdu and Bengali periodicals. The essay featured in this episode provides an overview of the culture of Bengali lullabies in the cities and villages of Pakistan's eastern wing. Published in 1963, the essay covers the various themes that feature in these lullabies, including the topography of the Bengal region, its flora and fauna, and the mother's prayers for the safety and success of her child. The

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00:10:52

How Can Music Be Food for the Soul? - Mufti Muhammad...

Sounding Board ·

2025/12/26

Mufti Muhammad Shafi (1897-1976) was a leading scholar and jurist of the Deoband school in Pakistan. In this episode, we revisit an essay from his Arabic treatise on the permissibility of music, translated by Muhammad Abdul Muiz. The essay examines from a Hanafi standpoint the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's proverbial phrase about music being food for the soul.Featured recitation:Muzaffar Warsi - Wohi Khuda Hai

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00:09:50

There's No Such Thing as Pakistani Music - Rafiq...

Sounding Board ·

2025/12/18

Rafiq Ghaznavi (1907-1974) was a pioneering musician and actor of Indian and Pakistani cinema. In this essay, written in 1953, Ghaznavi attends to a most fundamental question: can there be such a thing as Pakistani music? Ghaznavi holds Pakistan's broadcasting czar Zulfiqar Ali Bukhari responsible for deliberately pushing for a separate Pakistani musical identity, distinct from its Indian counterpart. The essay was republished as part of anthology by Professor Shahbaz Ali in 2012.Featured

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00:06:15

Listening on Trial at the Sultan's Court in Delhi -...

Sounding Board ·

2025/12/12

Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Firishta (d. circa 1623) was a Persian historian who served the Sultanate of Bijapur in the Deccan. His seminal work, the "Gulshan-i Ibrāhīmī" (The Garden of Ibrahim) is a long history of the Muslim conquest of India. It was named after his patron, Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II. The essay featured in this episode is based on an excerpt from the book's first volume. It tells the story of the famous trial of Nizamuddin Auliya (d. 1325) in the court of Sultan

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00:12:55

The Partitioned Airwaves of All India Radio -...

Sounding Board ·

2025/12/01

Zulfiqar Ali Bukhari (1904-1975) was a pioneering broadcaster, as well as a poet and musicologist. Born in Peshawar, Bukhari was among the earliest administrators of All India Radio, and the founder of Radio Pakistan. In this essay, excerpted from his autobiography that was serialized in an Urdu newspaper between 1962 and 1966, Bukhari recalls the days of Hindu-Muslim disputation over All India Radio airtime. He talks about his resentment for the harmonium, the origins and instant popularity of

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00:10:19

The Sacred Sarangi of Ustad Bundu Khan - Muhammad...

Sounding Board ·

2025/11/24

Muhammad Hasan Askari (1919-1978) was a critic, essayist and short story writer. Born in Bulandshahr, Askari spent his most productive years in Delhi, Lahore and Karachi. The essay featured in this episode was written circa 1956-57 as an ode to the sarangi legend Ustad Bundu Khan. Keeping Bundu Khan's person as a centerpiece, Askari meanders through his various intellectual preoccupations with Indo-Islamic culture, drawing upon Urdu musicology, Sufi practices, and his reading of Hindu

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00:17:29

Radio Pakistan’s Ban on Rabindra Sangeet – Abul...

Sounding Board ·

2025/11/18

Abul Mansur Ahmad (1898–1979) was a Bengali politician, journalist and writer. He participated in the Pakistan Movement and later played a leading role in the struggle for East Pakistan’s political autonomy. The essay featured in this episode was written by Ahmad in August 1967, in the aftermath of the controversial Radio Pakistan ban on Rabindranath Tagore’s music. Historians sometimes describe — and at other times overstate — this controversy as one of the turning points in the turbulent history

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00:10:39

Poetry, Music and the Mushairah - Sajjad Zaheer

Sounding Board ·

2025/11/12

Sajjad Zaheer (1905–1973) was a Marxist poet and revolutionary who lived and worked in both India and Pakistan. The essay featured in this episode, written around 1958, explores the tradition of tarannum (melodic recitation) in the Urdu mushairah (poetic symposium). Zaheer examines why poets who recite their verses melodiously are so beloved by mushairah audiences, and whether tarannum allows listeners to overlook questions of literary merit. He discusses the performance styles of poets such as

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00:12:27

Kazi Nazrul Islam and his School of Music - M. N....

Sounding Board ·

2025/11/07

Muhammad Nurul Mustafa (1936–2000), known by his pen name M. N. Mustafa, was a Bengali journalist, scholar and diplomat. After studying journalism at Punjab University, Mustafa worked as an editor for the English-language dailies The Morning News and The Pakistan Observer, and later as an assistant regional director at Radio Pakistan’s Dacca station. In Bangladesh, he pursued a distinguished career in radio broadcasting and was appointed Director General of Bangladesh Betar in 1992. The essay

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00:08:18

Why People are Scared of Classical Music - Nargis...

Sounding Board ·

2025/10/25

Nargis Khanum (1943-2017) was a pioneering arts and culture journalist. Born in Pune, she joined the daily Dawn as a staff reporter in 1966 and led a career that spanned over 50 years. In this essay, written for the the Morning News in 1977, Khanum explains why the layperson finds it hard to appreciate classical music. She traces the art form’s roots to folk traditions and outlines ways in which a novice listener can cultivate a taste for the music's timeless beauty.Featured music:1. Roshan Ara

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00:10:15

The Charade of Classical Music - Krishan Chander

Sounding Board ·

2025/10/24

Krishan Chander (1914-1977) was an Indian writer of novels and short stories. The essay featured in this episode, titled "Gānā" (Singing), was part of an undated collection of essays. It is an acerbic and insightful take on the sociological dimensions of music, examining the class structure of musical practice and appreciation. True to his socialist and Progressive roots, Chander draws parallels between the pretentious musical soirees of the cultural elite, and the raw and emotive singing

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00:07:13

Singing Pakistan in Calcutta - Abbasuddin Ahmed (Eng.)

Sounding Board ·

2025/10/24

Abbasuddin Ahmed (1901-1959) was a renowned Bengali musician, scholar and recording artist. He was among the earliest Indian artists to take to the gramophone, and gained widespread acclaim in Calcutta before moving to Dacca in 1947. The essay featured in this episode is part of his 1961 autobiography, translated into English by his granddaughter, the musician and scholar Nashid Kamal. It talks about the early days of World War II propaganda department, the famine and political unrest in Calcutta,

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00:07:19

Inventing Musical Notation through Sound Recording

Sounding Board ·

2025/10/14

Madame Azurie (1907–1998), born Anna Marie Gueizelor, was a pioneering actor and dancer in Pakistani, Indian, and Bengali cinema. The essay featured in this episode comprises a speech delivered by Azurie during a 1961–62 national music conference held in Karachi, which addressed the challenges of developing a robust system of notation for North Indian classical music. In her speech, Azurie advocates for the invention of notational symbols for Indian beat cycles and the use of sound recordings to

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00:12:26

The Music of East Pakistan

Sounding Board ·

2025/10/08

Salimullah Fahmi (1906-1975) was a Bengali poet and careercivil servant in the erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The essay featured in this episode surveys the various genres of Bengali music prevalent in the region. It provides insight into the representation of Bengali culture within the Urdu public sphere, and its parallels with West Pakistani folk and literary traditions. Crucially, it highlights the various possibilities ofnational harmony and union within the musical realm, that the

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00:09:41

Christian Origins of the Symphony Orchestra

Sounding Board ·

2025/09/30

Daud Rahbar (1926-2013) was a Pakistani scholar of comparative religion who taught at various North American universities. In this fascinating essay, Rahbar distills for the Urdu reader a history of orchestral music in the Western tradition, and his reading of its relationship with premodern Christianity. Rahbar draws parallels between what he considers to be the Christian, Islamic and Hindu approaches to sound and performance, and makes the key argument about why the operatic form is alien to

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00:11:50

The Sozkhwani of Lucknow

Sounding Board ·

2025/09/26

Abdul Halim Sharar (1860-1926) was a renowned poet, novelist, journalist, historian and reformer of British India. The essay featured in this episode provides a history of sozkhwani, the elegiac recitation tradition associated with South Asian Shi’i Islam. It was part of a trailblazing cultural history of Awadh and its capital of Lucknow, written majorly to respond to cultural stereotyping, and serialized in the journal "Dilgudāz" (Melter of Hearts). The essay was later published in the

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00:07:58

The Art of Naatkhwani

Sounding Board ·

2025/09/26

Ustad Sibte Jafar Zaidi (1957-2013) was a college professor and proponent of Islamic sound arts in South Asia. The essay featured in this episode comprises of two continuous sections from Zaidi's 1995 monograph, "Ṣautī ‘Ulūm-o Funūn-e Islāmī" (The Sciences and Arts of Sound in Islam). The sections delve into the historical background of poetry written in honour of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and the various genera of musical and literary traditions associated with it. Zaidi's essay is

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00:19:48

Issues in Pakistani Music

Sounding Board ·

2025/09/26

Aminur Rahman was a Pakistani musicologist who wrote extensively on the historical and comparative aspects of North Indian musical traditions. Rahman's Urdu and English writings were published across leading literary journals and art magazines. The essay featured in this episode was composed in the 1950s, and published in 1961, under the title "Pākistānī musīqī ke masā'il." Rahman lays out the terrain for what he saw as a developing Pakistani musical identity. He draws upon

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