The Art of Puirt a beul

I had briefly mentioned previously in my prior post – “How It All Started” regarding playing music with my mouth. Today, I would like to elaborate further on that.

Playing music by mouth or making sounds to create a tune is not new to us. Even during our evolution we communicated with sounds more so than words. And even today there are some amazing performers who perform a complete song with 100% vocals and the song sounds as good as a recorded version.

I still remember the days in junior college when during a singing competition one contestant, just to keep the flow of the song, naturally played the music with mouth from one stanza to another. It was a Raj Kapoor and Mukesh song – “Kisiki Muskurahato pe ho nisar” and the antra is “Mana apni jeb se phakir hai” and before the next line, there is a quick sound of an instrument “ta da, ta da”. He played that. Everyone laughed. Some found it cute, others found it stupid. I laughed too.

Today when I look back, I would say it was such a natural thing for him to do. Sometimes while singing a song we do want to express the actual feel of music and if we don’t have the ability or the facility to play an instrument, we tend to play it with our mouth.

That’s really how I got started. Not really to be a professional performer for playing music with mouth. But because I couldn’t play an instrument it really helped me to finish my tunes with some vocalization of instruments. And this is no offense to those who play instruments. To be a music composer or even to be able to play an instrument is a remarkable job. It is fairly easy to whistle a tune than to play that same tune on piano.

But that shouldn’t discourage us who really cannot play an instrument. There could be several reasons why we can’t.

Hence, the art of – “Puirt a beul”. It is a Gaelic term for Mouth Music or vocalization of instruments. As per Wiki, the characteristics are –

It involves a single performer singing lighthearted, often bawdy lyrics, although these are sometimes replaced with meaningless vocables. In puirt a beul, the rhythm and sound of the song often have more importance than the depth or even sense of the lyrics.

I have so far being lucky to put some meaningful lyrics with the tunes. And in current times, I have started believing that this is exactly what most music composers are doing.

So for this week, there are no lyrics. I have put a random tune together with something that came to my mind. You might find it funny and stupid at first, but I am sure it will grow on you.

Random Tune.mp3