Music & Moods – Poetry & Pain

 

[I’m posting two transcripts from segments of the PBS NewsHour from last month.  The first one, below from 24 October 2022, is from two student reporters who explored the connection between music and our moods.  (“Music,” as I’m sure you’ve heard, “has charms to soothe the savage breast” – William Congreve, The Mourning Bride, 1697.) 

[I’m pairing it with the text of a slightly earlier segment on Afghan poets and how they find hope through their poetry even in exile from Afghanistan.]

“EXPLORING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN OUR BRAINS, OUR MOODS AND MUSIC”

Have you ever wondered why a piece of music makes you feel a certain way? As part of our Student Reporting Labs’ ongoing look at youth mental health, student journalists John Barnes and Brigitte Bonsu explore the connection between our brains, music and our moods. It’s for our arts and culture series, “CANVAS.”

Judy Woodruff:  Have you ever wondered why a piece of music makes you feel a certain way?

Well, as part of our Student Reporting Labs’ ongoing look at youth mental health, student journalists John Barnes and Brigitte Bonsu explore the connection between our brains, music and our moods.

That’s for our arts and culture series Canvas.

John Barnes:  Hey, Brigitte. How was your day?

Brigitte Bonsu:  I don’t know. I feel like I never have time for myself.

John Barnes:  Haven’t you been playing the cello?

Brigitte Bonsu:  No. How about you?

John Barnes:  My day wasn’t too bad. I was actually playing this really peaceful and calming song last night.

Brigitte Bonsu:  I know how that feels. I always felt that way when I played the cello.

John Barnes:  Wait. You were there the whole time?

So, how does rhythm affect our mood? That is, why does me talking like this feel different emotionally than me talking like this?

Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Northwestern University:  That probably starts in utero, when the little fetus is developing.

There’s this rhythmic input. Our maternal heart rate, the aorta and the heart sort of tap on the diaphragm. And so three different sensory routes, vibration, touch and sound, have this syncopated rhythm that is continuous.

And so the brain essentially comes to connect pattern, repetitive, rhythmic, sensory input with being safe and regulated.

John Barnes:  That may be why we pace around before giving a big speech or tap our feet to a rhythm when we’re nervous.

Brigitte Bonsu:  So, what about lyrics? How do they affect us?

Dr. Adenike Webb, Temple University:  When I work with clients to write songs, I often start with the words first with them before we get into the music.

Brigitte Bonsu:  This is Dr. Webb and Dr. Thomas, music therapists I spoke to about the significance of lyrics.

Dr. Adenike Webb:  You know, when there’s a song that’s like, I am so sad right now, I don’t have words for it, but this singer does, or reminding us we’re not alone in whatever were feeling.

Brigitte Bonsu:  So how do we use music to make us feel better in our daily lives?

John Barnes:  Try taking breaks to do little rhythmic activities throughout the day.

Dr. Bruce D. Perry:  Calligraphy or doodle in a lecture, graphic use of your hands, it’s rhythmic, and it has the same rhythms as conversation, the same rhythms as being rocked as a baby.

Brigitte Bonsu:  And you can also try what Dr. Thomas calls the tunnel playlist.

Dr. Natasha Thomas, Purdue University:  A lot of times, in our, like, anxiety spirals or depression episodes, there’s a moment when you know you are going into it.

Then we think about, OK, when you’re in the tunnel, when you’re in those deepest, darkest moments, what music can help affirm where you are and not make you feel like there’s pressure to get out of it, but just sort of be with you?

John Barnes:  Our last tip, try playing some music yourself.

When the pandemic happened, I spent a lot more time learning guitar and songwriting. Music can help us make sense and relate to events, and when we know that other people are going through it. So it kind of helps us feel seeing. When everything comes together perfectly, it’s just euphoria.

(CROSSTALK)

John Barnes:  Thank you. Thank you so much.

Brigitte Bonsu:  When I play and I really focus on a note or a section in a piece, I feel like, actually, I play 10 times better, and I really like that experience. and it just makes me feel more empowered.

Music lets me know that I can get better.

Judy Woodruff:  Some of us would never play an instrument, but it is so inspiring to watch these young people.

[John Barnes, a member of the Class of 2025 at the University of Virginia, is a filmmaker, songwriter, and actor from Arlington, Virginia.  He has completed two fellowships with PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs.

[In 2021, Brigitte Bonsu was one of eight students from the Washington, D.C., area to join the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs for its annual Homegrown fellowship.  She is now studying English as a member of Roanoke, Virginia’s Hollins University Class of 2025.]

*  *  *  *
“AFGHAN POETS FIND INSPIRATION IN EXILE, USING ART TO CHANNEL THEIR PAIN”
by Ali Rogin 

[The transcript below is from a 14 October 2022 segment of the PBS NewsHour broadcast.]

Judy Woodruff:  Poetry has a special place in the heart of Afghans. It has played a prominent role from the country’s ancient history to its present day.

But when the Taliban took over, many of Afghanistan’s most popular poets had to flee. They are now figuring out how to find inspiration in exile.

Ali Rogin talked to several masters of the art for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Ali Rogin:  In post-Taliban Afghanistan, the new constitution was written in prose. But the idea of the new Afghanistan, peaceful, pluralistic and democratic, was cloaked in poetry, starting with the lyrics of the new national anthem written in 2006.

Abdul Bari Jahani, Author, Afghan National Anthem:  This is Afghanistan. And this is the honor of every Afghan. This is the home of the soul. And this is the home of the peace.

Ali Rogin:  It’s such a hopeful message.

Abdul Bari Jahani:  Thank you.

Ali Rogin:  Was that intentional?

Abdul Bari Jahani:  Yes.

Ali Rogin:  Abdul Bari Jahani is one of Afghanistan’s most prominent contemporary poets. He’s spent most of his adult life in the United States, fleeing Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979. Since then, he’s wielded his most powerful weapons, his pen and his voice.

Abdul Bari Jahani:  This was – all the artists and the poets and the writers were doing their part in the jihad or in the – in fighting against occupiers. In the same role, deeply against the civil war after the Soviet withdrawal, poets were opposed to the Taliban too.

Ali Rogin:  Above all, Jahani wrote about the need for Afghans of all ethnicities to unite, a theme that the then new President Hamid Karzai wanted to promote in the new anthem.

Abdul Bari Jahani:  It’s about the pride we have taken in our country, in our history, in our – our present.

Ali Rogin:  Karzai’s choice of a well-known Pashto-language poet was also deliberate. Poetry is central to Afghanistan’s past and present, not just as a storytelling method, but as part of the story.

One of the most famous examples, Malalai of Maiwand, the namesake of Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai. In 1880, Afghans were fighting their second war against the British. During the battle of Maiwand, the soldiers grew demoralized. Malala roused them with a stirring short poem in the Pashto language known as a landay.

Person (reciting off screen):  “Young love. If you do not fall in a Battle of Maiwand, by God, someone is saving you as a symbol of shame.”

Ali Rogin:  These types of verses [i.e., landays], usually written by women, are what drew Shafiqa Khpalwak to poetry.

Shafiqa Khpalwak, Poet:  It’s a way of resistance for women. It has been throughout the history against patriarchy.

Ali Rogin:  But patriarchy was part of the Taliban. When it came to power in the mid-1990s, women were largely erased from public life.

So too were modern music and poetry, except for the Taliban’s own, which fixated on war and martyrdom. When the Taliban fell in early 2002, Khpalwak was 8 years old. As a student and poet, she flourished. In 2014, Khpalwak recited a poem at the presidential palace, paying tribute to another symbol of Afghan national unity, the flag.

Shafiqa Khpalwak:  I kind of glorified the flag as the flag of a land where there was love, it is free, it is prosperous, it is flourishing, it is youth, it is beautiful.

The Taliban website wrote about that, that this is a very erotic poem, and [that] she actually disrespected the Afghan flag.

Ali Rogin:  The poem, “My Flag Is Made of Colors,” became a surprise hit, catapulting Khpalwak to fame.

Shafiqa Khpalwak:  I was not expecting that it would go that viral.

I think it was one of the most important events of my life.

Ali Rogin:  In those years, the poetry scene that Khpalwak was part of embodied modern Afghanistan. Men and women took part in sher jangi, a traditional game that’s a mix between a poetry slam and a rap battle, like this one Kabul University in May 2021.

Just three months later, all of those forms of expression and the drive for gender equality were lost when the Taliban took over Kabul and the Americans withdrew. Khpalwak escaped Afghanistan and is now in Canada. One year on, she feels no more settled.

Shafiqa Khpalwak:  I think I’m not only exiled from my country, but I’m exiled from myself.

Ali Rogin:  For now, she has put down her pen.

Shafiqa Khpalwak:  This grief is so – it’s like an ocean. It’s drowning me. And I don’t know how to swim.

Ali Rogin:  Sometimes, though, grief inspires, as it did for poet and singer Goodar Zazai. Now living in Pakistan, he wrote “Akh Watan Watan,” “Oh, Homeland,” after celebrating his first Eid holiday away from loved ones.

Goodar Zazai, Musician:  We had lost our homeland. So, in a very disturbed and crying state, I wrote the poem “Akh Watan Watan,” and then I was able to sing it with music.

Ali Rogin:  Back under Taliban rule, popular music is once again considered sinful.

Jahani’s national anthem no longer plays, nor does the tricolor flag fly. But Jahani says that’s just Afghan history running its course.

Abdul Bari Jahani:  This is the luck of the – of the Afghans. Whichever party comes to power, they change the flag, they change the coins, they change the banknotes, they change the constitution.

Ali Rogin:  What remains is the desire for knowledge and freedom. Some women have opened unofficial schools to teach girls beyond grade six, when the Taliban says they must stop learning.

And a favorite act of public protest, gathering to read.

Do you believe that will continue, despite the Taliban being in power again?

Shafiqa Khpalwak:  Oh, yes, of course. This is how we survive. This is how we survive. And we will survive.

Goodar Zazai:  Those who think they can destroy our identity, culture and music by removing artists and poets should think again. No one can take Afghanistan from us. And each of us can work for our people in our professions from any corner of the world.

Ali Rogin:  The Taliban may have reconquered the country, but, in Afghanistan, history shows that the pen always outlives the sword.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Ali Rogin.

Judy Woodruff:  It’s an enduring reminder the pen does outlive the sword.

Thank you, Ali.

[Ali Rogin is a correspondent for PBS NewsHour Weekend and a foreign affairs producer at the PBS NewsHour, writing and reporting pieces for TV and the web.  Her reports have also appeared on MSNBC, ABC, SiriusXM, and nationally-syndicated FM radio shows..  Rogin joined NewsHour from ABC News in 2019, where she spent five years covering Congress and other beats in Washington, D.C.]