Jugni
The firefly-spirit who wanders the land in song, reporting what she sees.
Jugni is both a character and a song form. She is a wandering spirit, a firefly, a soul, who travels from town to town; each verse tells where she went and what she saw, and ends with a refrain of her name. Singers make up new verses as they go, and so Jugni can comment on anything: love, death, corruption, a new railway, a famous saint.
One popular story holds that the form began in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, when two folk singers, Bishna and Manda, followed the jubilee torch around Punjab singing mocking verses, and 'jubilee' became 'jugni'; others link it to the Sufi idea of the soul's journey. Either way it was taken up by both the street singer and the shrine.
Alam Lohar made Jugni famous across both Punjabs in the 1960s and 70s, his son Arif Lohar carried it to the world with Coke Studio, and Rabbi Shergill, Gurdas Maan and many others have sung their own Jugnis. It is a form that never finishes.
More music forms
The Guru Granth Sahib is arranged by raga, not by author: the scripture was meant to be sung.
▶ Watch
The heroic ballad of the Sikhs, sung to the small dhad drum and sarangi in front of the Akal Takht.
▶ Watch
Unaccompanied verse sung at speed by two or three voices, the Malwa cousin of the dhadi ballad.
▶ Watch
The short, witty couplets that fly back and forth during giddha and bhangra.
▶ Watch
Three-line verses of love and longing, sung in duet between lovers or friends.
▶ Watch
The Sufi song of the Punjab, created by Shah Hussain and perfected by Bulleh Shah.
▶ Watch
The school of classical singing born at the court of the Maharajas of Patiala, famous for its daring, fast and ornate style.
▶ Watch
The singing family of Sham Chaurasi near Hoshiarpur, whose greatest masters, Salamat Ali and Nazakat Ali Khan, moved to Pakistan in 1947.
▶ Watch
The songs women sing through a Punjabi wedding: ghoriyan for the groom, suhag for the bride leaving home, and sithniyan to tease the other side.
▶ Watch
The loriyan sung to babies and the rhymes of the courtyard, the first poetry every Punjabi child hears.
The laments women sing for the dead, and the ritual mourning in which they beat their breasts in a circle.