EMOTIONS IN PAKISTAN’S PUNJABI FOLK MUSIC: TALIB HUSSAIN DARD AS A SELLER OF GRIEF (1980-2019)

Abstract

This research delves into profound connection between Pakistani Punjabi folk music and emotions. Folk music played a key role in evoking and expressing the emotions such as grief. Grief emerged as prominent emotion through folk music and the poetic expressions served as a carrier for conveying the grief regarding various sufferings of the people of Punjab. This study shows that the cultural identity, as emotions are not personal and music fosters a sense of unity and collective emotional experiences among people. In a broader perspective, the role of Dard as “The seller of Grief” reflected the societal emotions with the evolution of emotional expression in Pakistani Punjabi folk music providing insights into the historical events and served as an important resource for historians and scholars interested in knowing the history of emotions of the Sandal Bar. Moreover, the folk music of Dard goes beyond the generational gaps, where the digitalization reshapes musical preferences and raises inquiry regarding emotional experience’s universality with its persistence through technological and cultural turns. This study embarks the Dard’s role over the relation between the human emotions, culture and music which is documented beyond his time as a new hallmark in field of history of emotions.