The Listening Self

Life in rural communities unfolds in layers of complexity, where each new birth marks not the beginning of carefree childhood, but an immediate introduction to responsibility and survival. From my earliest memories, life wasn’t about play it was about purpose. With a curious mind perpetually asking elders thousands of questions, I began herding goats at a young age, thrust into a world that demanded alertness and understanding. In those formative years, I learned to read the environment intimately: the trees, the birds, the wind, the livestock. But what captivated me most profoundly was sound. When you’re alone herding livestock across vast jungles and mountain ranges, sound carries an ambivalence that stirs conflicting emotions fear and hope, shock and recognition, the unknown and the familiar. The sharp cry of a hornbill defending its territory, the urgent bleating of goats sensing a predator, the violent rustle of wind through trees each sound demanded my attention and interpretation. I was forced to listen intently, to decipher what approached, and to act decisively against every threat. Most of my shepherding days were spent in solitude, and this loneliness became an unexpected gift, teaching me to understand the world through silence and sound alike. Decades have passed, and much has changed. I’ve traveled to different places, ventured far from those mountains. Yet despite the distance, I still long for the music of nature. What I’ve discovered, however, is that I’ve also forged a unique connection with music itself not merely as background noise or entertainment, but as something that resonates at a deeper level. I find myself asking: Why does certain music touch the soul so profoundly? Why does it penetrate the heart with such precision? Why does it seem to convey messages from familiar situations we can’t quite name? How does our brain instantly recognize certain chords, as if remembering something forgotten?

The music I’m drawn to most often carries no words just musical chords, strings, and flutes breathing majestically pitched sounds into existence. Listening to Anouar Brahem, the Tunisian oud player whose work penetrates the soul, particularly his piece “The Astounding Eyes of Rita,”1 puts the listener in a state of simultaneous conundrum and ease. The music waxes and wanes through varied emotions and ultimately leaves you in silent awe. When you listen to his “Stopover at Djibouti,”2 you become completely hypnotized by the strings of the oud, entering a state of mesmerism where you surrender to the rhythm and vanish like water turning into air. Then there is the unmatched Sudanese flutist Hafiz Abdirahman Mukhtar and his album “Everlasting Days.” When you listen to “Ports,”3 you cannot help but wonder: how can anyone create something so magical, something that leaves the soul spellbound? Through this piece, you travel into orbit, into bewilderment and ecstasy. The album also features “Features from the Face of the Village,”4 a composition that makes you wander like a whirling dervish, seeing the unseen and feeling a transcendence beyond normal human capabilities. No words emerge—only magnificent energy beyond ordinary perception. Then there is the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and his “Valse Sentimentale” 5 a tender, reflective, and wistful piece, expressive of deeply personal emotions. It is heartbreaking and indescribably beautiful. Through this composition, you understand how music transcends understandable realities, how it portrays thousands of unsaid feelings, and how pure instrumental music connects hearts and gives everyone their own unique understanding. I read comments about “Valse Sentimentale” on YouTube, where the piece now has over 30 million views. People offered vastly different interpretations. One listener wrote: “The expression of a broken rage, a lost love, a forgotten memory, a dead rose somehow flourishing, coming all together in a sick melancholy and expression of reasonable insanity.” Another commented: “Children playing hopscotch, but the camera pans out and they’re in a dystopian war zone.” All of this reveals the depth of emotion embedded in the piece and how everyone carries their own translation of it. Hafiz of Sudan, Brahem of Tunisia, and Tchaikovsky of Russia all portrayed their understanding of reality through music. And somehow, they reached my heart: a Somali nomad who, except for our shared humanity, has no tangible connection to any of them or their countries. It is a human connection forged through experiencing the multilayered realities of life and finding common ground that transcends borders, language, and circumstance.

Perhaps the answer lies in those early days of listening when survival depended on understanding every sound, when solitude taught me that meaning hides within rhythm, tone, and silence. Just as I once interpreted the calls of birds and the warnings of wind, I now find myself decoding the emotional language of strings and breath. The solitude that taught me to listen evolved into a capacity to hear not just with my ears, but with something deeper a part of myself shaped by those lonely days when sound meant everything, when listening was survival, and when silence held its own wisdom. What those seeking meaning feel when listening to this kind of music is often unexplainable. Yet, if anyone has ever offered a true explanation, it is the one provided by Al-Ghazali in his book The Alchemy of Happiness: “The heart of man has been so constituted by the Almighty that, like a flint, it contains a hidden fire which is evoked by music and harmony, and renders man beside himself with ecstasy. These harmonies are echoes of that higher world of beauty which we call the world of spirits; they remind man of his relationship to that world and produce in him an emotion so deep and strange that he himself is powerless to explain it.” From a Sufi perspective, this passage reflects the idea that music is not merely an art form but a spiritual mirror. The hidden fire in the heart represents the soul’s innate connection to the Divine. When stirred by melody and harmony, this fire awakens, momentarily dissolving the boundaries between the self and the transcendent. In these ecstatic moments, the soul remembers its origin, glimpses the higher realities, and experiences a profound longing for reunion with the Source a longing that is felt more than it can be articulated. Music, then, becomes a subtle bridge between the earthly and the spiritual, guiding the seeker toward inner illumination and divine remembrance. Life’s journeys will take you to different places, but there is no journey more beautiful than the one where you seek meaning in everything you hear, see, touch, or imagine. From the mountains where I first learned to listen, to the concert halls and recordings that now fill my ears, the thread remains the same: sound as language, music as truth, and silence as the space where understanding begins. Here are the songs I mentioned in my writing. You can listen to them when you have time, and perhaps when you are in search of something deeper 1: Anouar Brahem - "The Astounding Eyes of Rita" 2: Anouar Brahem - "Stopover at Djibouti" 3: Hafiz Abdirahman Mukhtar - "Ports" (from "Everlasting Days") 4: Hafiz Abdirahman Mukhtar - “Features from the Face of the Village” (from “Everlasting Days”) 5: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - "Valse Sentimentale"