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By Andleeb Khan
ISLAMABAD, Aug 24 (APP)::Folk artists are not just performers, they are becoming the planet’s last storytellers, translating the Earth’s pain into human language through centuries-old traditions of oral history, song, and poetry. In a world where scientific warnings go unheard, these cultural custodians are giving nature its voice back.
In an age of data and digital noise, the Earth still speaks the oldest language, music, rhythm, and story. And in Pakistan’s vulnerable heartlands, where floods swallow homes and heatwaves crack the soil, it is not scientists or politicians who are translating this message for the people. It is the folk singers, the poets, the drummers.
They are the Earth’s last genuine storytellers.
Take 18-year-old Sham Bai. When she stands barefoot on a dusty stage in Sindh, tamburo in hand, she doesn’t just perform, she channels. Her voice carries both memory and prophecy. The lyrics she sings are not just warnings; they are living testaments of a world unraveling.
Sham Bai sings of collapsing houses, unreturned lovers, and rivers that rise like ghosts. But behind the poetic sorrow lies lived reality: she’s watched floods erase entire villages, her own included. Rather than fading into silence, she turns grief into sound—carrying it village to village like a sacred truth.
Where government campaigns fail to connect, her voice lands like a prayer and a protest in one breath.
Not far from her, Urooj Fatima, better known as Sindhi Chhokri, turns her verses into rap anthems for a generation scrolling through grief. “Many don’t know what climate change even means,” she says, “but they understand pain. That’s what we rap about.”
Meanwhile in KP, Karan Khan plants seeds—lyrically and literally—urging listeners to nurture trees like they would their own children. His tappas aren’t just nostalgia—they are climate calls dressed in familiar melodies.
At Lahooti’s Karoonjhar Commune, musicians treat the mountain like a living being. “We don’t archive songs—we mourn with them,” says Saif Samejo. The songs are no longer just cultural—they are ecological memory, protesting both environmental and man-made disasters.
Poet Nasir Aijaz calls his writing a memoir of what was lost—rains that once arrived on time, seasons that once followed rules. His words drift between fact and feeling, reminding us that climate change is not a future—it’s a fading past.
TikTok and YouTube have turned these ballads into viral laments. Scrolling through them feels like browsing an emotional map of Pakistan’s climate reality. Weeping mothers. Flooded fields. A tamburo playing softly in the background. It’s not advocacy—it’s witness.
And it’s working. Villagers like Waheed Soomro say, “When we hear these messages in our own language, in our own stories, we feel them. Then we act.”
In the silence left behind by broken promises and vanishing seasons, folk artists are stepping forward with voices that echo deeper than policy. They are becoming the Earth’s memory-keepers, its messengers, its mourners. Where maps redraw rivers and forecasts predict disaster, their songs remain—to remind us of what was, and to warn us of what could be.
In a world unraveling, the voice of the Earth may be a folk song. And someone, somewhere, still hears it.And this story is not unique to Pakistan. Across continents and cultures, artists have long served as the emotional memory of humanity—transforming pain, injustice, and resistance into lasting cultural legacy…
Across the world, artists have long used music and poetry to speak out against injustice and human suffering.
In the United States, Blues and Jazz were born from the deep pain of slavery and racial oppression. Singers like Billie Holiday gave voice to this trauma—her haunting song Strange Fruit exposed the horror of lynching. Later, Bob Dylan’s protest songs during the civil rights movement and Vietnam War became anthems for change.
In the Spanish-speaking world, Pablo Neruda used poetry to mourn the loss of democracy and protest dictatorship. His Canto General blended love for Latin America’s land with grief over its political struggles.
In South Asia, poets like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib turned Urdu poetry into powerful protest. Their verses captured the voice of the oppressed and continue to inspire movements for justice today.
In Africa, Nigeria’s Fela Kuti mixed Afrobeat with bold political messages against military rule, while Miriam Makeba in South Africa used music to fight apartheid and promote global awareness.
From Persian to French, Arabic to Russian, poets like Forugh Farrokhzad, Jacques Brel, Mahmoud Darwish, and Anna Akhmatova transformed personal and national tragedies into poetry that helped people endure war, exile, and oppression.