VIEW: A fading melody —Zaair Hussain - Friday, October 29, 2010

Source : http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\10\29\story_29-10-2010_pg3_5

Slowly but surely, Pakistani writings and plays and documentaries are being reinvigorated. In the same vein, the music industry and culture must not only be preserved, but reborn. In these times of dry darkness, we must ensure that the crush of bodies, rich and poor, surges once more at shrines where Sufi musicians lose themselves in their devotion

We may say the arts, song
and dance are immaterial at a time when barbarians are within our gates, when our politicians are no better than we remember, when our allies and our army grow impatient and our judiciary and the media, once tipped to become the shining lights of a new era, have sampled and delighted in the power politics of a too familiar past.

And this, all this, is the precise reason we need the arts and culture. It is why this time, and this place, is where we need them most.

There is nothing frivolous about art, about creativity. Without it, we wither and die from the inside. Asphyxiated of venues, our artists, particularly our musicians, are threatened with extinction. And our people are shuddering at the sound of their silence.

How many will never find their words, who would have been poets to sear the souls of a nation? How many musicians will never know themselves, who would otherwise have set hearts to pounding and blood to pumping, who would have taught us in ways we always and never knew what it was to be Pakistani and what it was to be free? How many of them will never find their voice?

We speak of culture as if it were a monolith delivered from on high, its origins impeccable and lost now in the impenetrable fog of time. This is patently false; a culture lives and breathes and grows just like the human beings who create it. Musicians, artists, writers, those who invite us into their souls, are the heartbeat and the pulse of any culture. They are the creators and recreators of our culture, our voice to our people and other nations. We can survive without them, but not truly live.

In writing a column, it is common to peg a broader principle onto inspiration from recent events. No particular event inspired this article, save for the stirring of the winds. It reminded me of a glorious, snowless winter less than two years ago, my first winter after moving back to Pakistan. It reminded me of the grand scale and international splendour of the Rafi Peer festival, which creased my face with a smile and swelled my chest with pride. As the cool breeze once again flows around us, I feel the aching hole the festival’s departure has left.

It has fled, chased off alongside many smaller musical events like so many birds of paradise shooed from an increasingly monochrome world.

What happened to the festival?

There was a loud blast, and then a deafening silence.

It makes perfect sense for terrorists to target our musicians and our artists. Not for the apocryphal jihad that they parrot endlessly, but for the same reason they target shrines: because they know that a people with healthy, vibrant souls are a field in which their hideous ideology can never be sown.

Rafi Peer was the most high profile international concert held in Pakistan. But the underground bands, the up and rising hopefuls, even some of the traditional Sufi artists like Papu Saaen have been forced into retreat. Our artists have always been dependent on concerts for the meat of their profits. And now the shows are dying, the bangs becoming whimpers.

This has not come about because musicians lack the heart or courage, but because no potential audience member wants to shed blood for his evening’s pleasure, and no sponsor or venue wants that blood on their hands. But this is one point on which we cannot back down: we must find a way to secure the arts, all the arts, and music is no exception.

I have no personal talent for music, but I am a writer. If told not to create in the manner that I know, in the manner that I love, I would be dumbfounded. It is neither a hobby nor a calling, neither a job nor a duty. It is neither magnificent nor tawdry. It is, no more and no less, a piece of me without which the whole would be nonsensical.

A true musician, likewise, could no more abandon music than breathe through his ears. To let them fall mute is a crime against them, and against ourselves.

We must preserve them, these creators of our culture. They remind us who we were and show us where we can go. We must make clear — through our voices and our wallets and our feet — that the show must go on.

Those talented young men and women with music in their bones must be able to bring it into the world. The barbarians within are not our only failing. Access to instruments is limited and expensive, whether sitar or guitar. Access to sponsors and venues and proper training is even scarcer.

Where are our classical conservatories that will bring the ancient spirit of the region into this age, into this world? Where are our dedicated music programmes, scattered through our academic institutions like seeds in a lush land? Where are the sponsors and promoters who will match skill with cash if only we, the public, demand it?

We must demand it, and pay for it, and turn out in droves for it.

Slowly but surely, Pakistani writings and plays and documentaries are being reinvigorated. In the same vein, the music industry and culture must not only be preserved, but reborn. In these times of dry darkness, we must ensure that the crush of bodies, rich and poor, surges once more at shrines where Sufi musicians lose themselves in their devotion. We must have, again, those artists representing a dozen different flags practising their craft under the crisp winter sky of Lahore. We must have a wildfire of new performers, flush with youth and talent and the joy of music, playing before a crowd for the first time.

There is a huge market that awaits, a golden apple to plucked, of people open to, wanting, desperate for more music in their lives. As much as brilliant literature or dramatics, great music — great Pakistani music — holds a mirror to the best of us.

Many say we must reveal this softer, cultured, joyous side of our people to the world. I agree.

But it is far more essential that we must reveal it to ourselves.

Play on.

The writer is a Lahore-based freelance columnist. He can be reached at zaairhussain@gmail.com