Watch Aaj Rung Hey (Pakistan Idol)
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The Story Behind Aaj Rung Hey (Pakistan Idol)
Hadiqa Kiani carried Amir Khusro's centuries-old rang onto prime-time television on Pakistan Idol, where she judged Geo TV's first season alongside Ali Azmat and Bushra Ansari. Her channel posted this six-minute performance on 6 May 2014, nine days after the finale.
The arrangement is built for a live stage rather than a studio: Irfan Kiani's harmonium holds the drone and Rajveer keeps the pulse on dholak and tabla, with no houseband behind them. The answering voices are the show's own, credited to Mohammad Shoaib, Zamad Baig, Asad Ali and Kashif Ali. Zamad Baig had won the season nine days earlier and Mohammad Shoaib had finished as runner-up, so the chorus replying to Kiani is made of the singers she spent the season judging. She opens the invocation almost conversationally, then hands the refrain over to them until it turns into the communal call a rang is meant to be.
Meaning & Translation
Rang is both a word and a form. It means colour, and it is also the name qawwals give the short piece kept for the close of a gathering, the one sung at Hazrat Nizamuddin's shrine during the urs. Khusro writes it in Braj, and the register is deliberately homely: the refrain, roughly "today there is colour, oh mother, there is colour", is a child running home with news rather than a poet addressing a court.
What is being reported is the colour that settles on a seeker who has found his guide. Kiani sings it in that spirit, as news worth announcing rather than a secret worth keeping.
Details
Artists & Credits
- Hadiqa Kiani singer
- Amir Khusro composer
- Amir Khusro lyricist
- Rajveer musician
- Irfan Kiani musician