ThirstyFish

The Ney is a five or six hole end-blown flute traditionally made with cane or reed, popular in Persian and Middle-Eastern music. The Turkish Ney is closely identified with the Mevlevi Sufi Order. The Order was founded by the great mystical poet Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, better known in the West as just Rumi.

Rumi, together with friends and students, sat in conversation accompanied by the music of the reed flute, sometimes telling jokes, sometimes reciting poetry, sometimes whirling in meditation (zikir) and sometimes pondering the greatest spiritual meanings of existence, a human being's relationship with God, with Truth itself. Rumi constructed a whole poetic language based around the reed flute. Below is the first few lines of the Coleman Barks interpretation of the The Song of the Reed, the opening lines of the 25,000 couplet masterpiece, The Masnavi:

• Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separated.
• "Since I was cut from the reedbed,I have made this crying sound.
• Anyone apart from someone he loves understands what I say.
• Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back.
• At any gathering I am there, mingling in the laughing and grieving,
• A friend to each, but few will hear the secrets hidden within the notes. No ears for that.
• Body flowing out of spirit, spirit up from body: no concealing that mixing. But it's not given us to see the soul.
• The reed flute is fire, not wind. Be that empty."
• ...

Song of the Day: Sufi Music (Sukun)