"A striking example [Poetry and Music] is Begum Akhtar who used sounds borrowed from language with such amazing skill. In her utterance the flowing lines of the vowel became graceful arches, and the hard consonants, supporting pillars. The edifice is then animated by vast range of hard, soft, nasal, throaty, sibilant and breathy sounds which became an integral part of her musical calligraphy. She is commonly thought of a ghazal singer,..."