Watch Tora Bahraam Khaana
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The Story Behind Tora Bahraam Khaana
Tora Bahraam Khaana reached a national audience through Coke Studio Pakistan's fifth season in 2012, the year Rohail Hyatt built the show around what he described as the country's wealth of talent and cultural diversity. Hamayoon Khan, a Pashto singer from Munjai in Lower Dir, brought a song that never needed an author: it is assembled from tappas, the two line Pashto couplets passed from one generation of singers to the next, and no one has traced where the melody began. Hyatt's production sets that folk material against a pop arrangement and gives it room, running past seven minutes. The recording sits on Hyatt's own archive channel, which is where the first six Coke Studio seasons now live, rather than on the show's current account.
Meaning & Translation
The title is an address, not a description. Tora is Pashto for dark, and Bahraam Khaana is Bahram Khan called by name, so the phrase lands closer to "O dark Bahram Khan" than to anything about a house or a place. That is the conceit of the whole song. A woman is singing to a man whose dark complexion the conventional standard of beauty holds against him, and she is telling that standard it is wrong. She teases him about oiling his hair so the breeze can lift it, then catches him in his own words: he asked her to adore him first, and now he wants her to keep her heart in check. The tenderness is in that reversal.
Details
- Artist
- Hamayoon Khan
- Category
- Coke Studio
- Collection
- Coke Studio Season 5
- Released
- 2012
- Language
- Pashto
- Mood
- Romantic
- YouTube Views
- 1.66M
Artists & Credits
- Hamayoon Khan singer
- Rohail Hyatt producer