Earth Songs: Lore That Reminds Us Nature Is Culture
For the last two decades, composer and sound researcher Ashhar Farooqui has been collecting songs that celebrate our intimacy with nature from diverse regions in the country. Roundglass Sustain’s series Earth Songs is a celebration of the songs he found and their deep connection to the ecologies they inhabit.
A Roundglass Sustain PresentationSeries Created by Ashhar Farooqui
Updated September 01, 2026
A Roundglass Sustain PresentationSeries Created by Ashhar Farooqui
Updated September 01, 2026
20 min watch
For the last two decades, composer and sound researcher Ashhar Farooqui has been collecting songs that celebrate our intimacy with nature from diverse regions in the country. Roundglass Sustain’s series Earth Songs is a celebration of the songs he found and their deep connection to the ecologies they inhabit.
At dusk, herders in Nagaland call out to their animals, nudging them home from foraging in the hills. The calls often take the form of "vocables" or sung syllables set to the rhythm of a tati, a single-stringed instrument crafted from a gourd, a bamboo stalk, and sometimes a mithun’s horn. Every community in Nagaland has its own unique vocables, each one reminding us of our deep-rooted connection with the natural world.
In the hills of Peren in Nagaland, locals play the Tamtu, a playful reed instrument made from a leaf wedged between two shards of bamboo. On its own, the Tamtu can sound funny, enough to even make the player laugh. But often, from the leaf and bamboo, rises a beautiful song of love and loss…
When the winter snow swallows everything in Ladakh's Garkon village, its people turn to songs to see them through the harsh season. Among them is a "The Song of Flowers," a song that celebrates spring, and love among siblings. Like much of the region's folk music, it draws its imagery from nature, and the familiar theme of seasons turning over.
Ladishah, a Kashmiri folk tradition that blends satire and song, arose from travelling bards who went from place to place, singing wit-packed commentary on daily life and current events. The form follows recurring rhythmic and melodic pattern and short rhyming verses. Music maestro Munir Ahmad Mir sings one he remembers from his childhood days, a Ladishah that reimagines the familiar childhood story of the thirsty crow as a folk rhyme.
The red-wattled lapwing is found almost everywhere in India, and almost everywhere, it has inspired local tales, especially inspired by its distinctive and repetitive call. Gopi Akki, from the Siddi tribe of North Karnataka, narrates one such tale, of a woman who, in the middle of a fight with her husband, transforms into a lapwing, her cries echoing ever since.
