ਗੀਤ

What does geet mean in Punjabi?

Geet (ਗੀਤ) is the Punjabi word for a song. It covers everything from a film song on the radio to a folk song sung by women at a wedding, and from a hymn in the gurdwara to a lullaby at home. Any words set to music and sung aloud can be called a geet.

Where does the word geet come from?

Geet comes from the Sanskrit word gita, which means something sung. It is related to the Punjabi verb gauna, to sing, and the two words still sit close together in everyday speech: people say geet gauna, to sing a song, as naturally as they say geet sunna, to listen to one. In Shahmukhi, the Perso-Arabic script used for Punjabi in Pakistan, geet is written گیت.

What kinds of geet do Punjabis sing?

Punjabi folk music has a geet for every occasion, from birth to death, including marriage, festivals, fairs and religious ceremonies. At weddings women sing suhag for the bride and ghorian for the groom, songs that praise God and ask for blessings, while the short verse forms tappa, mahia and dhola carry love, longing and wit in just a few lines. The dhadi singers keep the old ballads alive, long songs that tell the stories of Heer and Ranjha or Sohni and Mahiwal. Many folk geet have no single author: they were made and remade by whole villages, passed from one singer to the next, and they still change a little every time they are sung.

How is geet used today?

Geet is still one of the most used words in Punjabi music. Radio presenters introduce a new film geet, singers ask the crowd which geet they want to hear, and families keep the old folk geet alive at weddings and lohri gatherings, often with a dhol and a tumbi beside the singers. In the diaspora, children in Canada and Britain learn Punjabi partly through geet, because a song stays in the memory longer than a lesson. A geet can be a few lines long or last for an hour, but in every form it does the same work: it carries words people want to remember on a tune they cannot forget.