A Music Freedom Day report from Pakistan by Sher Alam Shinwari
According to a music critic, music cannot be expressed in words, not because it is vague but because it is more explicit than words.
But in the post 9/11 scenario, we have seen a dwindling trend of art, heritage and music as militancy adversely affected every sphere of our life. Artists and singers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata are threatened, kidnapped and some have been forced to quit the profession.
Banr in Swat and Dabgari in Peshawar were two the main music streets. They worked as learning nurseries where artists and singers used to transfer the art to their younger generations. These places were targeted by the militants, and Pashto traditional music suffered a serious setback. Hundreds of CD and DVD shops and music centres were also blown up.
Sardar Youafzai, a popular singer from Swat, and Gulzar Alam from Peshawar were fired upon by militants, while Haroon Bacha, a young folk singer, took political asylum in USA following threats from extremists.
It wasnt always so. A Pashton is said to be born with tapa, rabab and mungay. These are the tools through which a man gives vent to his hard life. A Pashtun versifies his sufferings, miseries and romance in tapa a couplet which consists of two irregular lines and he turns to rabab and mungay to throw away his daylong fatigue and sings out both his heart and head.
Hujra and Jumaat represent a typical Pashtuns religious, cultural and social life but modern age disturbed this balance in his routine life. Stuck between his religious obligations and social and cultural responsibilities, Pashtuns attitude towards art, culture and music became hostile, and militants exploited this changing mood in their own favour.
Pashto music touched new heights when a recording company, His Masters Voice, recorded the first ever Pashto song in the voice of a Persian-speaking lady, Guahar Jan Kalkatavi, in 1902 in London.
Later, around 250 recording companies came to India and had a thriving business. Large number of Pashto singers emerged. Even some Hindus living in Pashto-speaking areas in the pre-partition era began singing in Pashto. Radio Kabul was set up in 1925 while Peshawar Radio was launched in 1935. This further gave a great boost to traditional Pashto music. PTV too played a significant role in promoting local art and culture, including music.
Unless there is a change in mindset, the art of music will never flourish again, Ustad Nazeer Gul, a senior music director, told Freemuse:
Threats or no threat, our own peoples attitude towards music and singers has been hostile. Young female singers such as Rabia Tabbasum, Aiman Udas and Ghazala Javed, as well as Anwar Gul (a tabla player), and Shabana (a dancer), died tragic deaths while noted Pashto folk singers Rasool Badshah and Zarshad Ali fell victim to fatal diseases and a senior versatile folk singer such as Kamal Masood hailing from south Waziristan had migrated to Rawalpindi following threats from militants where he succumbed to serious burn injuries at his rented home caused by a gas cylinder blast, he said.
Akbar Hussain, 72, a senior Pashto folk singer, said, The conditions for Pashto music are not favourable in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata in many ways. My elder son was kidnapped three years ago by militants. They released him very fast, though. The feeling of being attacked from militants is still looming large.
Musharraf Bangash, a young singer, too was kidnapped but was released after remaining for sometime in captivity of militants.
Laiqzada Laiq, an author and Station Director of PBC in Peshawar, who recently has written a book on the evolution of Pashto music told this reporter, After digitalisation, Pashto music has gained widespread popularity. Every day a new singer joins Pashto music. Music bands with new experimentation also are getting momentum. I dont believe singers have threats now from militants most of them hype it in the local media just to gain the sympathy of some foreign donors. Yes, quality has suffered but quantitatively Pashto music today has more artists, instrumentalities and singers than it had a few years ago.
The acclaimed singer Sardar Yousafzai who survived an attempt on his life on 15 December 2008, however, underlined that singers and artists in the scenic valley are still facing problems of insecurity and threats from militants:
Hardly a week goes when I dont receive threats from extremists. But we have to fight back militancy. I am used to it now. We need to uphold our cultural identity at all costs, he determined.
Senior Pashto folk singers Zarsanga, Akbar Hussain, Hidayatullah, Gluab Sher, Mashooq Sultana and Qamru Jan are living a miserable life, they told Freemuse.
There is an undeclared ban on playing music. Artists and singers cannot perform live in Fata, and in settled areas too they are reluctant to perform in open air, for instance at wedding ceremonies, because of fear being attacked by militants. Every moment the sound of music is being choked, told Tajwali Khan, a music buff in Peshawar.
Pakistan: The undeclared ban on playing music lingers on « Knowledge and news about Artistic Freedom of Expression
Kashmiri girl rocks in Pakistan
NEW DELHI: Kashmir may have gagged its first all-girls rock band 'Pragaash' but right across the border in Karachi, a Kashmiri girl has made it with her pop-rock single despite an equally hostile environment to the western influenced music.
Maha Ali Kazmi, a young Pakistani of Kashmiri descent recently released 'Nazar', a love song that is being played all over the internet and on various television channels in Pakistan. Her relatives and acquaintances in Kashmir too have been listening to her number via internet and sharing it over various social networking sites.
Written by Pakistani lyricist Haroon Shahid and directed by Farhad Humayun, 'Nazar' is about unrequited love of a woman, conceptualized and visualized in a very post-modern manner. Maha's passionate rendition in a mellifluous and seductive voice combined with her hypnotic looks, emphasized occasionally by dramatic batting of her eyelids, makes 'Nazar' a very powerful video number. The usage of rich colourful metaphors for heartache and pain in a flawless achromatic background is quite avant-garde in the subcontinent.
Though 25-year-old Maha's entrance to the long list of Pakistani female pop and rock singers is nothing new from an urban Pakistani perspective, but her debut is noteworthy given the ever-increasing opposition of religious extremists to the western influenced music in Pakistan and in her ancestral home in Indian Kashmir.
The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella organization of various Islamist terrorist groups that emerged in 2007, dubbed music as 'unIslamic' and targeted music shops and several singers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. A young Pashtun singer and dancer Shabana of Swat, for example, was shot dead and her body was left hanging against an electric pole. Ghani Dad, Ayman Udas, and several other singers who paid no heed to the death threats issued by the TTP met similar fate. Many singers eventually caved in and gave up their singing careers and many chose to switch from pop and rock genres to devotional singing. Some singers fled the country seeking political asylum abroad. On top of this, the Punjab lawmakers passed a bill in 2012 banning music concerts in educational institutes.
Pakistani pop and rock genres, which incorporate elements of British-American rock and Hindustani classical music and sung mostly in Urdu, were born as an underground movement in the 1980s. It was a time when the Pakistani society underwent 'Islamization' campaign under the Zia-ul-Haq military dictatorship, notes Pakistani cultural critic Nadeem F. Paracha in one of his blogs. As a result the urban Pakistan youth produced rock and pop underground through small gigs at schools, colleges and university campuses. The new wave that began with the queen of disco pop Nazia Hassan led to the birth of bands like Junoon, Vital Signs, Jal, Strings etc. Their popularity continued to grow in the Benazir Bhutto era and their numbers mushroomed during the modernization and liberalization program under General Musharraf's dictatorship. Coke Studio, a Pakistani television series featuring live-studio music performances, that became a huge hit across the subcontinent started during Musharraf's regime. But since the escalation of violence and terror and a volatile economy, the music industry has been floundering again.
Though Karachi is relatively safer, Maha says it is not easy for aspiring singers anywhere in Pakistan. "The overall political and economic instability and the rise of religious fundamentalist organizations in the country have affected the music industry. There are hardly any record companies around and hardly any music concerts going on in the country. One has to really struggle to find funds to finance one's singing career here. My debut was supported entirely by my family and not any investors. "
Maha's father, an ethnic Kashmiri from Srinagar, migrated to Pakistan in 1964. Music, she says is a heritage passed down to her from the Hindustani classical artist Wajid Ali Shah, the ancestor from her mother's side. But it is her father, a music lover, who exposed Maha to his wide music collection ranging from Dire Straits to Nusrat Fateh Ali and Lata Mangeshkar. Enamored by the American legendary actress Audrey Hepburn and the songs featuring her such as Moon River, La vie en rose, Maha trained herself to sing and perform at school events and underground rock gigs before she was selected in an audition. Like all budding singers in Pakistan, Maha, a graduate in finance and microeconomics from MONASH University, Melbourne, will have to work on several self-funded singles before she can finance an entire album herself.
But not every Pakistani or Kashmiri girl is as lucky as Maha, she admits recalling the regret most liberal families including hers in Srinagar had this summer during her second visit, about the quitting of the Pragaash rock band. "It was understandable why the girls quit in the face of death threats issued by the orthodox and conservative elements," she says.
"But if ever I am in such a situation, I will not back down because if Malala Yousufzai could stand up for her rights, so can I," says Maha whose sensuality in the Nazar video stands in complete defiance of the prudishness of conservative sections of Pakistani and Kashmiri societies.
Kashmiri girl rocks in Pakistan - Times Of India
First--My intention is not trolling..I came to the news that there is some kind of undeclared ban on song by TTP by the news above..then I dig up the news in the top..is TTP is so much powerful that their diktat left so deep wound in Pakistan's Music Industry???also,"the Punjab lawmakers passed a bill in 2012 banning music concerts in educational institutes"--what kind of ch*tiyagiri is this???
