Ballads of Belonging
A sonic archive of Karoonjhar
By Areesha Khuwaja (Pakkhee)
Community Collaborator: Aliza Mangan – @Sartiyoon
This curated selection of songs reflects the emotional and ecological pulse of Nagarparkar - the ache of a land that has long learned to pray through song. Each piece, whether collected or newly composed, carries threads of devotion to the land, the pain of separation, and a persistent imagining of peace in a valley that once knew no borders. The Karoonjhar Mountains, seen as kin and mother, emerge as a wellspring of inspiration, their presence echoed in every note, every longing, every vow to remember.
In Karoonjhar, music lingers in stone, in rituals, in the footsteps of women walking across the desert. This is a landscape where poetry and place are inseparable, where the monsoon has a melody and memory is kept alive through music.
The following songs, filmed and recorded across time and terrain, are part of a growing archive. Each piece is rooted in its context - a spontaneous dance, a remembered migration, a mountain seen as brother - threading together voices that make this land audible. This archive lives and listens. It is not a vault of relics, but a space for resonance. We invite musicians, filmmakers, and community storytellers to add to it. To let Karoonjhar keep singing through many hearts.
Aman Ji Nagri
Artist: The Sketches | Poet: Maru Khushk | Language: Sindhi
Filmed and edited by Haroon Habib during the Karoonjhar Residency, this piece becomes a meditation on harmony. “Even the cattle ask for peace,” the poet writes - reminding us that peace in this land is not a policy, but a pulse shared by all living beings. The visuals stay still, resisting spectacle. The music, reinterpreted by Saif Samejo, adds weight to the plea of a land that has long been a sanctuary for diverse communities - Jain, Hindu, Muslim, nomadic, pastoral.
Adh Qalandar Chhokri
Artist: The Sketches | Poet: Aziz Gul | Filmed by: Haroon Habib | Language: Sindhi
Then there are songs that trace belonging through the act of naming - mapping terrain not with coordinates, but with intimacy. Adh Qalandar Chhokri, written by Aziz Gul and composed by The Sketches, does this with grace. The poem drifts through villages - from Kaasbo to Choorio, Veera Wah to Saardhro, calling out for a girl as sacred as the Gori temple, whose presence is felt across the land. Haroon Habib’s visuals linger in moments of quiet; a hand brushing hair, children at play, the slow rhythm of daily life. These small gestures reveal what no border can contain: a deep-rooted sense of place.
The poet’s question echoes: O girl, as sacred as Gori temple - which country is yours?
But in the world of this song, the question isn’t about nationhood. The villagers it speaks to do not experience borders. Their geography is relational, oral, sacred; not defined by lines on a map, but by stories, ponds, dunes, and kin. The poem names the land not to divide it, but to keep it alive. In this song, belonging is not bounded. It simply is.
Mara Laal Warjhara Ji
Singer: Mai Fatima | Language: Kutchi | Produced by: Lahooti
Some songs speak of what was once fluid: trade, migration, connection - now severed by borders. Mara Laal Warjhara Ji reminds us of a time when nomadic traders (wanjhara) moved freely between Thar and Gujarat. A woman pleads to be taken to Gujrat because her beloved is warjhara. During our event in Nagarparkar, Shamoon Kohli, a local woman known for her quiet presence, rose and danced - spontaneously, barefoot, free of inhibitions. Her dance was not spectacle. It was memory in motion. It was as if the land, through her, remembered how it used to move.
Doongar Ne Ni Wado Wecho
Singer: Mai Dhai | Folk Song | Language: Marwari | Presented by: Karoonjhar Studio
Not all resistance needs protest; sometimes it arrives as a lullaby whispered to the land. In Doongar Ne Ni Wado Wecho, sung with soulful urgency by Mai Dhai, resistance becomes devotion. “Do not cut the mountain, it is my brother. I wear it as my crown,” she sings - not as metaphor, but as truth lived and felt. In a world where granite is mined and earth is parceled for profit, this song does something radical: it reclaims the mountain not as resource, but as relative. It remembers the mountain for what it gives freely - water that flows, valleys that thrive, herbs that heal, shade that protects. The song ends not in outcry, but in vow. A Rakhi is tied, not to a man, but to the mountain. Here, resistance is not confrontation; it is care. Over time, this song has become something larger than any one poet or singer. It lives in public memory. Children sing it as if it were always theirs. And perhaps it is - a song that belongs to the land.
Maara Udta Bhawariya
Singers: The Sketches ft. Mai Dhai & Jeeto Fakir | Language: Sindhi & Kutchi | Produced by: Lahooti
There’s a tenderness in Maara Urta Bhawariya that feels ancestral - both playful and profound. It begins with a promise: I won’t harm you, my flying bumblebee. But beneath the joy and rhythm lies a deeper ethic - one of care, of nonviolence, of coexistence with even the smallest beings. The bumblebee, often perched on a woman’s nose pin or bangle, becomes a symbol of both beauty and trust. It is not brushed away, but welcomed. The song has become a part of public memory - sung across generations, often accompanied by Kutchi Rasuda, a celebratory dance performed during communal gatherings in Tharparkar. It celebrates biodiversity, but also a moral geography: one where love is cautious, playful, and deeply responsible. In a land where Jain nonviolence once shaped every step, Maara Urta Bhawariya feels like a continued whisper of that same custodianship - carried now through melody, movement, and memory.
Piya Piya Kar Rahi
Singer: Bhagat Jawaharlal | Language: Braj | Poet: Meerabai | Presented by: Lahooti
In a region like Nagarparkar where Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Sindh once flowed into one another without rupture, Meera’s songs arrived not by conquest, but by wind, by footsteps, by bhagats. Here, the borders are recent; the bhakti is ancient. Meerabai’s voice, like that of Kabir, is interwoven into the musical memory of this land. She is not confined to Rajasthan. Just like Kabir, she belongs just as deeply to Nagarparkar, where devotion moves between tongues, across villages, through shared metaphors. In Kasbo, sung by Bhagat Jawaharlal, her bhajan finds a home again, not as a borrowed tradition, but as part of this soil’s own expression of longing. Meera is not stillness carved in stone like the Buddha; she is flowing energy, breath in motion, longing that refuses containment. In Nagarparkar, her spirit crosses dunes, enters temples and courtyards, and settles wherever someone dares to love the divine without boundary
Karoonjhar Bhagwan
Singer: Rajab Faqeer | Poet: Ishaque Samejo | Presented by: Lahooti
In Karoonjhar Bhagwan the mountain becomes diety - a godly presence, witness to centuries of prayer, migration, resistance, and resilience. Sung in a style rooted in Sindh’s folk traditions along with Nida Fazli's popular doha "Sabki Puja Ek Si", the song collapses the boundary between geography and divinity. Here, the granite is not inert; it breathes, protects, and blesses. In a time when sacred landscapes are under threat, Karoonjhar Bhagwan becomes more than a song. It is an act of remembrance, reverence, and resistance.
Umar Aaon Weendo Puchhaan
Singer: Ustaad Muhammad Ibrahim | Poet: Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai
Few voices carry the weight of longing like that of Ustaad Muhammad Ibrahim - a legend in Sindh’s folk tradition. His earnest, weathered voice does not dramatize Marvi’s pain; it honors it. Each word lands with dignity, echoing the quiet strength of a woman torn from her land yet unwavering in love. In this kafee by Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Marvi calls for return to her people, her soil, her Karoonjhar. Her resistance is refusal: to forget, to surrender, to let go of who she is.
At the Echoes of Karoonjhar Residency, this cry was echoed through breath alone — in a haunting Boreendo instrumental by Fakir Zulfiqar.
In Judai Ka Safar, Almitra Mavalvala, a cohort artist in the Karoonjhar Residency, reflects on the displacement of her Parsi community in Karachi - a journey of separation that mirrors the Jain and Hindu migrations from Nagarparkar. Her voice carries a contemporary grief, rooted in shared histories of exodus.
Maroara Sangiara
Singer: Sarmad Sindhi | Poet: Zahid Shaikh | Language: Sindhi | Presented by: Maka Music Channel
A love letter to Sindh - its people, its landscapes, its stories. From Keenjhar to Karoonjhar, the song becomes a prayer for rain, peace, and abundance. Sarmad Sindhi’s voice flows with affection and reverence, not only for the land but for those who live upon it. Zahid Shaikh’s poetry remind sus that the people of Sindh are not just witnesses to the land’s beauty; they are its soul, its beloved, and the living characters in its timeless story. In celebrating rain, the song also celebrates kinship with place, with one another, and with the narratives that shape identity.
Kakar Barsiyo Karoonjhar Te
Singer: Fozia Soomro | Language: Marwari | Presented by: Thar Productions
This Marwari song is a jubilant ode to the monsoon rains of Karoonjhar. This piece bursts open with joy in Fozia Soomro's playful yet grounded voice. The melody is full-bodied and festive, echoing the communal spirit of rain celebrations in Parkar. The lyrics and rhythm suggest a world momentarily made whole - where fields rejoice, bodies dance, and the air itself is washed clean. In this song, rain is no longer a hope. It is presence, abundance, song.
Karoonjhar Je Kor Mathe Ko Sao Pilo Mor Nache
Singer: Sarmad Sindhi | Language: Sindhi | Presented by: Sindh Studio
The song captures a moment where land and life seem to move in harmony. Green and yellow peacocks dancing atop Karoonjhar’s peaks as the first monsoon drops fall. Sarmad Sindhi’s voice is filled with exhilaration; the mountain is alive, not in metaphor, but in movement. Here, nature performs. Not for us, but with us. This song is a reminder that the land has its own rhythms and sometimes, if we pay attention, we get to dance along.
This archive continues to grow. If you carry a song, a story, or a sound that belongs to this land - share it with us and become our community collaborator.
