When a society experiences rapid political, technological or social change, historians need time to develop a language to describe the change. The arts can immediately respond with poetry, music and visual images.

Music is the most easily shared of the arts across a society. It becomes a historical record of its times, from classical compositions to modern genres such as punk, blues and rap. Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal music compositions reflect the intense anxiety and uncertainty of pre-WWI Europe. Songs such as “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” perfectly embody the collective trauma experienced by enslaved African Americans. The singer songwriter Prince expressed existential dread with his edgy music, ending one of his songs with a child asking, “Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?” Lyari’s female rapper Eva B sings: “Gir ke hi uthna seekha main ne [Only after falling did I learn to rise].”

The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, facing the loss of his kingdom, wrote, “Lagta nahin hai dil mera ujrray dayaar mein [My heart feels lost in this blighted land].” In the violent chaos of Partition, Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote in August 1947, “Woh intezaar tha jiska, yeh woh sahar tau nahin [This is........

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