Watch Dholan
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The Story Behind Dholan
Dholan is a Saraiki love song from Rung, the 2002 album on which Hadiqa Kiani leaned hardest into Pakistan's regional traditions, and it went out as one of the record's singles across 2003 and 2004. The composition belongs to Masud Malik, a Saraiki singer who taught Kiani in her earliest years, and the words to the Saraiki poet Rasheed Qaiserani, so its lineage runs through Saraiki music rather than a studio brief.
Kiani's own account of the video runs longer than most credit blocks. Altaf Anwar filmed it in the deserts and mountains of Balochistan, on routes so punishing that the crew's vehicles stalled for hours and every meal had to be carried in. Mohib Mirza plays a stranger on a camel, and a small girl, visible only to the woman, stands in for the childhood she gives up when she follows him.
Meaning & Translation
Dholan is the Saraiki word for a beloved, the one a life turns on, and Hadiqa Kiani glosses it herself as the love of a life. The register is Saraiki folk poetry's oldest: an address to someone who is not there, sung as though they were still within reach. A song built on that one word does not have to explain what went wrong between two people, because the calling is the whole subject.
The video reads that longing a second way. What the woman loses is not only a person but her own childhood, her music and her freedom, which is why the little girl is left behind in the dunes with the instrument.
Details
- Artist
- Hadiqa Kiani
- Category
- Single
- Collection
- Rung
- Released
- 2002
- Language
- Seraiki
- Mood
- Romantic, Melancholy
- YouTube Views
- 1.48M
Artists & Credits
- Hadiqa Kiani singer
- Masud Malik composer
- Rasheed Qaiserani lyricist