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 T

Tumbi

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 Punjabi single-stringed lute with a high-pitched, percussive sound

Detailed Definition
The tumbi’s sharp, rhythmic twang appears in Bhangra and diasporic poetry to symbolize rural joy, protest, and sonic minimalism; its association with folk heroes like Lal Chand Yamla Jatt links it to themes of resilience and lyrical authenticity in Punjabi verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Punjabi folk poetry, the tumbi’s single-string twang echoes the heartbeat of Bhangra dancers; A protest poem uses the tumbi’s sharp pluck to symbolize farmer resilience against oppression; Modern diasporic poets compare the tumbi’s portability to the migrant’s ability to carry culture in a pocket; In a verse by Amarjit Chandan, the tumbi becomes “the voice of the soil speaking through steel”; A contemporary poem likens the tumbi’s resonance to the buzz of bees in mustard fields; In feminist poetry, the tumbi’s simplicity challenges ornate patriarchal instruments.
Additional Notes
The tumbi is a Punjabi one-string drone lute with a small wooden body, used in folk and bhangra music; its sharp, rhythmic twang drives energetic dance—poets might reference it to explore minimalism as power, the voice of rural Punjab, or the tumbi as emblem of cultural pride in South Asian diasporic pop and protest music.
Also Known As
Punjabi tumbi
Skip to main content