'Experiences of Rain' transcription

Prince (sings):
The sky looks misty and cloudy,
looks like the rain's gonna fall today.
Since morning I’ve been calling all my friends,
waiting for the rain to fall and water us.
Oh yeah, rain, yeah.

I'm a Glasgow man and I don't wanna be angry.
Please send down the rain
to drop on all of my friends
send down the rain….
(fades)

Sadaf: My city was, like, very rare to have rain. And we are waiting for rain, like, a long, long time. I mean, months and months.

Prince (sings):

Send down the rain, send down the rain, yeah.
Everything in life has got its time and seasons…
(fades)

Sadaf: Sometimes they need to pray for rain in mosque and they call to the people for the praying to having rain because of the, lots of, you know, agriculture was disturbed because of no rain.

Linh: The toads, usually they grind their teeth or they make the sound that kind of notifies that rain is going to come. So we make it into the story, as like: when the toad grinded teeth, the sky god had to make rain.

Ghanima:
As the sky begins to rumble
While the blue sky fades away
And the cries of the crows get louder
I wonder what the skies and the ground awaits.

Alas! The heavens opened
and a fierce drumming began upon the earth.
As the night falls,
the pit-pat pit-pat of rain against
my tinned roof creates an ambience.
Sound that soothes me to sleep,
dreaming of hope in the new day to come.

The smell of fresh ground and grass invigorates
my senses, a sign that the thirsty earth
has finally been quenched,
a blessing to farmers that planting season has begun.

The dance of sun rays against the puddles
generates a shimmering rainbow
and hope that there is glad tidings after every storm.

Anwar: Most of the year was hot and dry, but when the monsoon finally arrived, it felt like the whole world come alive.

Sadaf: It's another like festival for us when the rain comes and we share to each other, pakora, you know, is the same, is the main dish during the rainy days. We made pakora.

Baraka: Different word for rain, I’m told. For rain رذاذ (radhadh) or مطر (matar) maybe.

(matar) مطر
(radhadh) رذاذ
(hetan) هتان
(rash) رش

Prince and Ghanima:
As the sky begins to rumble
While the blue sky fades away
And the cries of the crows get louder
I wonder what the skies and the ground awaits.

Alas! The heavens opened
and a fierce drumming began upon the earth.
As the night falls,
the pit-pat pit-pat of rain against
my tinned roof creates an ambience.
Sound that soothes me to sleep,
dreaming of hope in the new day to come.

Prince: I grew up in Nigeria. I played football in Nigeria when I was a lot younger than this, mostly at home and in school or so, when the rain just starts falling. When it falls very, very much, we just take off our shirts and go into the rain and start playing football. In that very game, you get soaked and wet and at the end of the day you pay for the coat.
(laughs)

You pay for the coat, you pay for the coat after a play because you must get the coat. The kind of rain that falls down in Nigeria is way more than the one that falls down here in Scotland. It rains hell. Like it rains, it rains blash, like it's showering, like it's like a rain pour. It rains like it's pouring down. Pouring down. Pra-pra-pra-pra-pra-pra!

(sings)
Just like raindrops falling from the sky.
It is like a blessing, a blashing from the sky
and when I see the rain falling blashing blash
I like the way it sounds, the sounds it makes,
the sounds it makes.
Ooh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh….(echoes)

Linh: A few weeks ago, there was a big typhoon that hit my hometown and we suffered the greatest flood that we ever had in history, which really shocked everyone, and we are the country that has floods and typhoons every year and even several times a year.

So, if it's such a shock for all of us, it means there's something very wrong with the weather. Rain is beautiful, as everything in nature, but we really should be aware of the negative signs like climate change.

Sadaf: We would sit near the window, waiting for the lightning, and when it flashed for a moment, everything inside the house appeared.

I always thought it looked like discovering pearls
hidden deep in the sea, each flash revealing
something precious.

And in that half-lit world, my father told stories.
Stories of his own childhood.
Stories of growing up with his mother.
Stories that were sometimes sad, but very beautiful
because they were true, because they were his.

Baraka: With my family, yeah, and the rain is quiet, and the house. Drink. With my sister, my brother. Yeah, I miss it. I miss my sister and my brother.

(sings: "Ma 'Allamak Sawt Al Matar" (What does the sound of rain teach you?)

/ما علمك صوت المطر) 

ما علمك صوت المطر كيف أحتريك
وإلا المطر ما جاب لي طاري أبد
كم قلت لك في غيبتك وش كثر أبيك
اشتقت لك تقول لي وأنا بعد

Linh: I feel like most of the time in Vietnamese culture, we mostly associate the rain with, like, the melancholy feeling. When the rain starts, it's the moment where we just sit in silence and contemplate our loss or our sorrow, or just the peace and the quietness that is happening in the atmosphere.

Anwar: I'm thinking what a golden time with my childhood time, my siblings, my parents. Because at this stage, my parents pass away, my mother pass away, and my siblings in a different country they lived. But I remember on my childhood time, all my family members were under one roof. And whenever the rain time started in my country and my city, I remember I really enjoyed that time.

So rain is a kind of connect with your memory.

Hope:
The land is waiting
Dry, edged, and cracked.
Gaps divide the in-between,
And so, borders emerge.
There are liveable lives and unliveable lives,
Promised lands, war zones, and refuge points,
But there is no so-called legal or illegal migration.

They are the sons of the sky.
We are all sons of the sky.

Above, the sky is trembling.
The rain descends a blessing,
Landing to embrace the harsh earth,
Quenching the dry heart,
Healing the cracks.

Di-da, De-da, the rhythm conveys a message of peace,
Hua-la, Hua-la, millions of voices speaking as one.

Sadaf: I literally love rain. In Scotland, it's very common. Every day, the people I saw in Scotland, they are taking it very normal. Some people are irritated with rainy, wet days, dark days, but I really love it.