A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter B

Buzuq

Musical Instrument
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A long-necked fretted lute used in Arabic and Levantine folk music

Detailed Definition
The buzuq’s bright, percussive tone appears in poetry of exile and urban lament, particularly in Mahjar and postcolonial verse; its association with zajal (improvised sung poetry) makes it a vehicle for oral tradition, political critique, and lyrical resilience.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Levantine poetry, the buzuq’s fretted neck carries the maqam of longing and exile; Poets describe its double courses as “voices in dialogue across borders”; The buzuq appears in protest verse as the instrument of poets who refuse silence; Its metallic timbre evokes urban alleys where stories are traded like coins; The buzuq’s history of adaptation becomes a metaphor for cultural survival; Modern poets use the buzuq to explore dissonance—notes that ache toward resolution.
Additional Notes
The buzuq is a Lebanese long-necked lute with movable frets, used in Arabic maqam music; its microtonal expressiveness conveys deep emotion—poets may reference it to explore longing (tarab), cultural fusion, or the nuances of untranslatable feeling.
Also Known As
Bouzouk
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