Yugan Yugan Hum Yogi

Shabnam Virmani, acclaimed director of the Kabir Project who now travels the world sharing of herself through her soulful satsangs gifts us her rendition of Yugan Yugan Hum Yogi as this week's Maitri Tune.

She emails us a beautiful note about what this song means to her:  "I was wondering what I can say about the experience of it, of singing it. It musters a vastness from you, wrenches it out of you, even if it wasn't being felt to begin with. I may start this song feeling wretched, small and beset with narrow-minded worries and obsessions, but this song, these words, pull me out of my 'self', despite myself."

And she shared an interview excerpt from the book "Bahuri Akela", Ashok Vajpeyi's book tribute to Kumar Gandharva:

Q: While singing Kabir, there is a deep almost terrifying sense of aloneness. In singing Kabir, your musical imagination has reached such heights, depths and differentiation, that is perhaps not in evidence in your other compositions. How do you resolve the duality of aloneness and community?

Kumar G: In Kabir one often glimpses a viraaniyat. This is the special quality of nirgun that needs expression. In Mira, it is a different quality. The meaning that you derive from reading a text, you should feel the same quality in the singing. If you don’t construct solitude while singing nirgun, then it’s not nirgun.

Q: You create a solitude of nirgun amidst a community of listeners. This is not true of the nirgun Yogi, who sings to nobody, to no audience of listeners.

KG: It is in the manner in which you pronounce the words, that can express the attitude of nirgun fearlessness. In “Nirbhay Nirgun…” Kabir is standing and shouting, that’s why the high note..

Q: As evoked by the phrase “ham hi bahuri akela”, in music/singing there is a sense of community as well as a sense of solitude. This seems unique to Kabir. Is this quality there in others?

KG: No. Kabir’s level is totally separate. In Kabir there is no division of the internal and external, so then what is there to fear? In Yugan Yugan Ham Yogi, it is really the soul speaking, not the body. Even if you remove the idea that it is Kabir speaking. "Avdhuta,yugan yugan ham yogi…" Who is saying this? No human has the courage to say this! It is the (universal) atma that is speaking. It is with great humility describing itself.