The Barah Maha is a divine poetry of Guru Nanak using the changing months and seasons of the year as a backdrop for the spiritual romance between God and the human soul. Don Cooper took this inspired composition and put it to music, twelve distinct tunes each expressing a unique energy through the verses of Barah Maha, and gave the recording to Yogi Bhajan on Guru Nanak's birthday in 1985. Now, Don Cooper has generously donated the work to anyone who wants to play or share it freely.
Commentary
BARAH MAHA or BARAH MASA (in Hindi), is a form of folk poetry in which the emotions and yearnings of the human heart are expressed in terms of the changing moods of Nature over the twelve months of the year. In this form of poetry, the mood of Nature in each particular month (of the Indian calendar) depicts the inner agony of the human heart which in most cases happens to be a woman separated from her spouse or lover. In other words, the separated woman finds her own agony reflected in the different faces of Nature.
The tradition of Barah Maha poetry is traceable to classical epochs. The mode was commonly employed to depict the moods of the love stricken woman in separation, and it became an established vogue in medieval Indian poetry. Modern languages of northern India claim several distinguished models.
In Punjabi, Guru Nanak's Barah Maha in the measure Tukhari is not only the oldest composition belonging to this genre but also the first in which the theme of love poetry has been transformed into that of spiritual import. He made the human soul the protagonist which suffers in the cesspool of transmigration as a result of its separation from the Supreme Soul. This is followed by Guru Arjan's Barah Maha.
Later some Sufi poets such as 'Ali Haider, Bulleh Shah, Hasham and Shah Murad also wrote barah mahas. Haflz Barkhurdar was the first poet in the Punjabi romantic tradition to compose a barah maha as an independent work. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were a number of barah mahas and siharffs written in Punjabi. Poetry in this class can be broadly divided into various types religious, farmers' narrative (included in an epic poem), viraha (separation) and 'trial of chastity' variety. Guru Arjan's Barah Maha falls in the viraha category, depicting through the twelve months the pangs of the bride, i.e. the human soul separated from her Divine Essence.
"The
use of music for spiritual attainment and healing of the soul, which
was prevalent in ancient times, is not found to the same extent today.
Music has been made a pastime, the means of forgetting
God instead of realizing God." -- Hazrat
Inayat Khan
