One would expect that a Nigerian person singing Punjabi music at an event at Sheffield Hallam University wouldn’t work as well as it did. Surprisingly, it did, to the dismay of the Indian students and others from different countries.

Jeremiah Abiola took on “Pani Da Rang,” the aching Vicky Donor’s ballad written around a lover’s absence and how grief gathers in the heart before it spills.

Abiola, dressed in a red jacket, black jeans, and black and white sneakers, strutted to the stage and waved his hands. “If you know the song, tweet,” he said to the students, who were mostly of Indian descent. Some of them replied with a “tweet”, but many were curiously staring at

Abiola, perhaps waiting to see how well he would sing the song. “Come on, let me see you wave!” Abiola said as he pranced in front of the students. The reception this time was better than the previous one; many of the students waved their hands and cheered him on.

A calm guitar led, and Abiola, fully in his element, began singing. “Pani da rang vekh ke (Looking at the colour of the water),” Abiola repeated three times, and the crowd happily sang the song back at him, word for word. “Ankhiyan jo hanju rud de (My eyes start to brim with tears),” he continued as the students sang with him.

Vocally committed to the performance, Abiola emphasised the song’s central image of tears rising, and the way water changes colour just before it overflows. His vocal phrasing was on the tip of breaking without tipping into melodrama. He, however, reached for that edge convincingly in places.

Where a native Punjabi speaker would bend or twist certain vowels instinctively, drawing out the ache in the recurring refrain about a beloved who never arrives, Abiola’s version was more cautious, as though he was afraid of making mistakes.

One could hear the difference in his delivery. It wasn’t a flaw so much as an accent, the sound of someone singing a language that’s not his own.

The Indian students were enthralled by his rendition; they understood how difficult it would be for a non-Indian person to hit some notes while singing such an emotionally wrenching song.

They smiled and cheered, even before he finished the song. The lone guitar that accompanied his set worked for him and against him in equal measure. With no luscious instrumental accompaniment,

Abiola’s voice was amplified by a handheld microphone and monotonous guitar rhythm. That stripped the song down to its sentimental importance, which suited the material; “Pani Da Rang” was never a song that needed ornamentation or excessive musical assemblage to be affecting.

But the absence of musical instruments also meant there was nowhere to hide. Every strained note, every syllable slightly out of pocket, sat exposed in a way an arrangement might have absorbed. Abiola never had a cover when he struggled to hit some vital notes in the song.

What pushed the performance wasn’t technical fidelity. It was Abiola’s audacity to perform a song that isn’t his language or popular languages like English, French, or Portuguese.

There’s something significant about a Yorùbá man choosing to inhabit Punjabi grief on a Sheffield stage. While he didn’t sing it like a native, he sang it like someone who had rehearsed the song long enough to be bold enough to sing it. The Indian students understood the gesture for what it was: a tribute and appreciation for their language and culture.

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