Jugni is a song form in which a figure called Jugni travels from place to place and reports what she sees. Each verse names a town and says something about it, and the refrain returns.
The usual account of its origin is that in 1906 the British sent a jubilee flame, a jubli, around the country, and two Punjabi folk singers, Bishna and Manda, followed it from town to town singing verses about what was actually happening in each place under the cover of celebrating it. Jugni is jubli.
They were arrested. The song survived and became a container: any singer can put any content into the Jugni frame and it will be recognised.
Alam Lohar's Jugni is the canonical Pakistani version. Bulleh Shah's kafis have been sung to it. It has carried Sufi verse, political comment, film songs and advertising.
A protest form disguised as a travel song, invented in 1906, still in daily commercial use, is about as durable as folk technology gets.
The word is also read as a form of jogan, a woman ascetic, which would make the figure a wanderer by vocation rather than a disguised jubilee. Both readings are in circulation and neither is settled.
The account usually given is that it began in 1906 as a response to the jubilee flame touring the Punjab, with the singers using the figure to comment on what the flame passed.
Every generation has refilled it. There are devotional jugnis, political jugnis, film jugnis and love jugnis, and the tune survives all of them.