Posts Tagged Music

Chal Way Bullehya Chal O’thay Chaliyay – Let’s go where everyone is blind

7 February 2010
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Chal Way Bullehya Chal O’thay Chaliyay
Jithay Saaray Annay
Na Koi Saadee Zaat PichHanay
Tay Na Koi Saanu Mannay
***
O’ Bulleh Shah let’s go there
Where everyone is blind
Where no one recognizes our caste (or race, or family name)
And where no one believes in us
***
Ab to jaag Musaffir pyare
Raeen gayi latke taare
Kar le aj karni da weera
Mod na ho si aawen tera
***
Awake, dear traveller, you’ve got to move on.
Trailing its stars, the night is gone.
Do what you have to do, do it today.
You will never be back this way.
Your companions are calling.
Let us go.
***
Awake, dear traveller, you’ve got to move on.
Trailing its stars, the night is gone.
A pearl, a ruby, the touchstone and dice
With all that you thirst by the waterside.
Awake, dear traveller, you’ve got to move on.
Trailing its stars, the night is gone.
Below a modern rendition of these verses by the inimitable Meekal Hasan Band. They have been instrumental in reintroducing Sufi poetry among the youth of our country. (more…)

Madam Nur Jahan

4 January 2010
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(Published in The Friday Times) – The twentieth century trajectory of Pakistani music and stardom are epitomised in the life and works of Madame Nur Jehan (1929 – 2000) also known as Malika-e-Tarranum. Had there been no partition of boundaries, musicians and composers in 1947, she would have been a subcontinental diva. A common Punjabi aphorism, loosely translated, states that there never was and never will be anyone like Nur Jehan. With her incredible talent, fiercely independent persona, flamboyance and ingrained humility, she surpasses even the best of global icons. The complexity of her life and times have yet to be appreciated: breaking with convention, she defined a new set of rules in the patriarchal entertainment industry, manipulating it where possible to ensure that she would not become the archetypal exploited South Asian singer. Her wit and lust for life remained till the end, and with the exception of not having died in her beloved Lahore, she died with no regrets.

When nine years ago, the Queen of Melody breathed her last breath in a Karachi hospital, the circumstances of her death were considered peculiar by Believers. Even in death she achieved what ritualistic Muslims seek all their lives – to die on the holiest day of the year. The twenty-seventh night of the holy month of fasting is widely believed as a night when all prayers are answered and the gates of forgiveness are let open. This is reportedly the reason that her Karachi-based daughters hastened her burial. (Other less spiritual accounts explain it as a consequence of conflict among her children by different husbands, and the struggle to control family assets). (more…)

Shamshad Begum

24 September 2009
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Dr. Visho Sharma

In keeping with the promise made by me while writing the mail on Shri Dushyant Kumar, I am here again with a piece of information on the legendary singer Shrimati Shamshad Begum. It was decades ago that the gifted crooner decided to call it a day and lead a private life away from the glitter of the film world. She has seldom been heard of as a person ever since, though her songs continue to be an important part of the Hindi film music lexicon even today. It was, however, a big (and a very pleasant one, too) surprise to find a very well documented article on the media shy artiste in the September issue of the Hindi magazine Ahaa! Zindagi.

The writer of the rare article Shri Rajeev Shrivastav met the affable singer in her Mumbai home and recorded for the posterity many hitherto unknown facets of the life of one of our most admired, and yet least covered, female playback singers. It is a matter of great satisfaction that she was conferred Padma Bhusahn. This gesture, though too late (more…)

Raag Bhitai

9 September 2009
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Please play this fabulous rendition of Bhitai Raag at the dergha of Shah Abdul latif Bhitai in Sindh. I am completely in love with this piece.

Bhitai Raag, Sindh

Slippery Stone: An Inquiry into Islam’s Stance on Music – Reviewed by Dr. Mahmood Ghazi

21 May 2009
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Review by Dr. Mahmood Ghazi

Title: Slippery Stone: An Inquiry into Islam’s Stance on Music

Author: Khalid Baig

Publisher: Open Mind Press

Year: 2008

384 pages.

Slippery Stone: Cultural Colonialism and the Music Question

The dawn of the colonization of Afro-Asian world in general and the Muslim world in particular brought in its wake efforts by the western academia to justify colonization in a variety of ways. (more…)

Bauls of Bengal

13 April 2009
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Found this translation and music video here

The famous Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore was influenced by Bauls. He translated the following Baul verse into English in his book The Religion of Man. The quote highlights the mystic Sufi focus on celestial love:

Where shall I meet him, the Man of my Heart?
He is lost to me and I seek him wandering from land to land.

I am listless for that moonrise of beauty,

which is to light my life,
which I long to see in the fulness of vision
in gladness of heart.

Reclaiming melody

5 March 2009
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Labourers of love: Mushtaq Soofi, Izzat Majeed & Christoph Bracher

Mian Yusaf Salahuddin’s Haveli, where Tarang was launched

Christoph Bracher testing equipment at Sachal Studios

Revival of the orchestra by Sachal Studios is a landmark in Pakistan’s music industry

Izzat Majeed: patron of music

Singers and musicians showcasing their skills at Sachal Studios

Humaira Channa

Izzat Majeed was raised in a household where good music was an object of reverence. His late father, Mian Abdul Majeed was an avid music fan, and from an early age his son was introduced to the finer details of sub-continental classical music. Mian Abdul Majeed was a student of Ustad Akbar Ali Khan and introduced Izzat to the layers and nuances of Indian film music that continue to guide him in his tastes and sensibilities

It was a mellow, moonlit evening of Lahore’s glorious spring when Sachal Studios released their album ‘Tarang’. It could not have been at a more fitting venue. Amid the decaying environs of Old Lahore stands the Haveli of Mian Yusaf Salahuddin, refurbished into a little planet of conservation as a courageous effort to protect and rejuvenate Lahore’s cultural soul. Mian Yusuf is the one denizen who has done this good deed for posterity, along with Syed Babar Ali who has conserved his ancestral Mubarak Begum Haveli in Bhaati Gate. Of course, the state has been abject in its failure to conserve Lahore’s majestic heritage.Sachal Studios is the brainchild of international businessman Izzat Majeed and man of letters Mushtaq Soofi, an exceptionally motivated duo. Sachal has infused the local music scene with innovation and energy. It is promoting a hybrid orchestra – once an integral part of the subcontinent’s film music tradition. Since 2003, Majeed, an activist and radical intellectual in a previous avatar, has devoted his time and money to this passion – to create Pakistani melodies in sync with the imperatives of contemporary musical sensibilities.

Started as a labour of love, Sachal Studios has released ‘Tarang,’ a collection of music that brings together the best musicians from all over Pakistan, and Humaira Channa’s competent voice. Of late, Channa has been a victim of commercial success and the quality compromises that define Pakistan’s derelict film music. Sachal’s production is a relief; a fresh departure from the usual, and the melodic results are impressive.

At the Old Lahore Haveli, Channa with her family and associates were accorded the respect they deserve. In a similar vein, immensely talented artists, such as the tabla maestro Billoo Khan and Pakistan’s leading sitar player, Ustad Nafees Ahmed Khan also attracted the attention of the star-studded guest list and Lahore’s usual chatterati. It was on a dimly lit terrace of the Haveli that I was introduced to Izzat Majeed, who looked pleased with himself and his Sachal partners as notes from the latest album mixed with the spring air.

Inspired by the Abbey Road Studios in London, Majeed and Soofi have been working for the last six years with Christoph Bracher, a scion of a German musicians’ family, to design and set up Sachal Studios. A state of the art music studio in Lahore is a landmark, for it heralds a new trend of post-production finesse that has hitherto been missing from the Pakistani music production process. A major contribution of Majeed is his introduction of the concept of ‘music-producers’. The norms of the industry have tragically reduced the role of a producer to an investor, from that of someone who drives the quality, provides technical inputs and steers the overall aesthetic of a musical experience.

Majeed related to me how he was raised in a household where good music was an object of reverence. His late father, Mian Abdul Majeed was an avid music fan, and from an early age his son was introduced to the finer details of sub-continental classical music. His father was a student of Ustad Akbar Ali Khan and introduced Majeed to the layers and nuances of Indian film music that continue to guide him in his tastes and sensibilities.

As he reminisced about the lost eras, Majeed told me how Jazz captured his imagination in his youth. “Believe it or not, great performers such as Louis Armstrong visited Lahore, and played fabulous music at the United States Information Services office on Queen’s Road,” he recalled. But he laments the fact that the vacuum that the local music scene is trapped in is gigantic. Ustad Mehdi Hasan does not sing any more, Madame Noor Jehan is dead and the great golden voices are getting lost in the onslaught of new trends in the music industry. He conceded that the pop scene is vibrant, but a bulk of those productions are “pure electronic noise”. Majeed is right, because the Pakistani state has demolished, brick by brick, the secular, composite culture of the Indus Valley and replaced it with a crippling “ideology” where no flowers bloom, where no bulbul sings.

This is why Sachal Studios is such an important intervention. It flies in the face of the state’s enforced desertification of culture; it seeks to encourage younger singers like Feriha Pervaiz, Ali Raza and Zaheer Abbas amongst others, to become heirs of the traditions that have historically defined musical consciousness in the popular domain. Izzat Majeed is also a poet in Punjabi and English, and so is Mushtaq Soofi. The two music aficionados have lent their verse to the myriad compositions of Sachal Studios.

Sachal’s efforts to build an orchestra have been rewarding. There is joy and unabashed triumph in Majeed’s tone when he says that in 2003 only 10 violinists were available in Lahore; the number has now increased to 30, providing extraordinary ground to the Sachal orchestra on which it can expand and deepen its range. The glorious sub-continental tradition of employing grand orchestras to enhance melodies, used by legends such as Naushad Ali, Madan Mohan, Khayyam, Shankar Jaikishen and Salil Chaudhry has become extinct except perhaps in the works of the genius, A R Rehman. In Pakistan, Majeed has picked up the tradition of serious film music of yesteryear, and has revitalised it; one hears the endangered violin instead of the plain electronic synthesiser in works produced by Sachal Studios.

But Majeed makes no grand claims. “I am not a crusader; I create music for the pleasure of music itself,” he says. This is an unusual statement in a country where bragging is a national pastime. It is easy to understand why Majeed’s partnership with Mushtaq Soofi has been fruitful. Soofi, a notable Punjabi poet, with vast experience in music production at Pakistan Television (PTV), is as self-effacing as Majeed. I met Soofi at the Sachal Studios premises, where he talked to me about his passion for music, sitting at his desk, chain-smoking, books with subjects ranging from pre-Islamic Persia to sources of the English language lying on his lacquered table. Like Majeed, he has also been immersed in music for the better part of his life. And after a long stint at PTV he has devoted his energies to Sachal. The prospect of pursuing music unencumbered by bureaucratic obstacles has set Soofi free.

Earlier, my visit to Sachal was quite an experience. Amid the ramshackle automobile workshops and Warris Road limits, which are constantly shrinking due to encroachments, stood the refurbished building, not too high yet modern in character. Like its vision, the environs and facilities of the studios were also ground-breaking. The state-of-the-art arrangements and impeccable acoustics have led to high quality results. I recalled (more…)

Noor Jehan & Khurshid Anwar

3 March 2009
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I loved Fawad’s post “A Divine Musical Collaboration – Noor Jehan & Khurshid Anwar” and here it is:

In the wake of Khalid Hasan’s death, the great Pakistani songstress Noor Jehan (Wikipedia) has been much on my mind. Khalid Hasan was a great admirer of the late Madam and wrote a much quoted tribute essay on Noor Jehan. Perhaps more importantly he translated Saadat Hasan Manto’s great portrait of Noor Jehan’s early years as a rising diva in pre-partition Bombay under the title “Nur Jehan: One in a Million” (unfortunately this link is to a scan of the essay and hard to read but the essay is included in the collection “Stars from Another Sky”). “Stars from Another Sky” includes other translations of Manto’s brilliant Urdu sketches published in “Ganjay Farishtay” and “Loudspeaker” on film industry icons like Ashok Kumar, Nargis, Naseem Bano (Dilip Kumar’s wife, Saira Bano’s mother) and Shyam. (more…)

Abida Sings Shah Latif Bhitai

29 January 2009
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Naveed Siraj has sent the captioned audio link. The track is originally by Ustaad Manzoor Ali Khan who belongs to the Gwaliar Gharana. The track is called “Khutaa Keenjhar kinaray, tambo tamachee jaam ja” which NS has translated as: “At the banks of (Lake) Keenjhar, the King (Jam Tamachee) puts up the camp”. Here, we can visualise the mighty ruler of the land arriving at the Keenjhar with all the pomp and protocol and is received by poor mohanas.  This track as is mesmerising.

While taking me through the audio journey, I learnt about Khuta Kinjhar kin (The King puts up camp at Keenjhar). This is Shah Latif’s Sur Nooree-Jam-Tamachee & it is simply describing the scene of the King Jam Tamachee falling for the simple fisherwoman Nooree.

So it starts with Shah giving voice to Nooree who cries out to the Samoo King “You are the supreme lord, I, a lowly fisherwoman, full of blemishes, pray do not foresake me and turn your back on me in view of our abject poverty. (more…)

Origins and traditions of Sufism and its music

10 January 2009
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Rasha Elass

Sufism is the ascetic element of Islam and it derives from the Sunni tradition. Scholars trace the word to two possible roots: “suf”, Arabic for wool, or “safa”, which means purity. Both roots describe the ascetics of the early days of Islam, as Muslims committed themselves to purity of heart and were known to wear wool robes.

Various schools of Sufism developed by Arabs during the Damascus-based Ummayed (660-750AD) and Baghdad-based Abbasid (750-1258AD) eras. Independent Persian ascetic tradition also developed during that time. Sufism continued through Ottoman times (1299-1923AD), and various schools that still exist today began developing in Turkey. (more…)

Let the cynics froth and fume

13 November 2008
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My piece published in The Friday Times

This is the magic of Lahore and its deep-rooted cultural mores. No other city can boast of such individuals, movements and trends. Hopefully, the music will live on. The interest of younger generations and their experiments with various forms of music hold great promise

Last week the breezy environs of the majestic Lawrence Gardens once again swayed to the tunes of Hindustani classical music. A week long music festival organised by the All Pakistan Music Conference attracted musicians, vocalists and enthusiasts from all parts the country, as well as from the imagined “enemy” India. How could it not be the case when musical traditions emerged out of a cultural synthesis of 700 years or more?

The leading light of APMC was Hayat Ahmad Khan, whose sad demise in 2005 was interpreted as an end to the glorious tradition of subcontinental streams of music in Pakistan. However, 83 years of hard work and philanthropic contributions was not in vain. He left behind a powerful institution and a network of committed individuals and aesthetes who have kept the torch ablaze. Not a small feat in the troubled waters of a Pakistani cultural landscape constantly under attack by nation-state ideology and extremism that consider music to be too “Indian” or, even worse, un-Islamic.

This is the greatest irony of our existence: the Muslims in India contributed to what is known today as Indian classical music and innovations such as the sitar and the tabla. The Qawwal bache trained at the shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi under the tutelage of Amir Khusrau became the founders of what was to later evolve as the sophisticated Khayal style of music. In dire times of the Sultanate and Mughal periods, these musicians had to take refuge in the princely states, and this is how the various gharanas, or schools of music, originated. This loose network of musicians organised along the lines of kinship or teacher-pupil bonds, sustained by court patronage and eclectic and secular in appeal, led to some fine moments. Tansen at Akbar’s court, Mohammad Shah Rangeela’s patronage and later the Kingdom of Oudh defined the high-points of this fused and seamless culture beyond religion, communal and sectarian divides.

To keep this tradition alive in post-independence Pakistan was a Herculean task. Pakistan was a moth-eaten and truncated country in the words of its founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The psychological trauma and barbarity of the Partition had jolted everyone and the traditional patronage of the state was missing. It was under these circumstances that on September 15 1959, music-inspired citizens met at the famous Coffee House of Lahore and launched a voluntary organization called The All Pakistan Music Conference. Eminent personas such as Roshan Ara Begum were among the illustrious list of its founders.

It should be noted that this was also the age when the maestro Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan migrated to India and Roshan Ara Begum was almost about to give up the passion of her life. Thus (more…)

Amir Khusro’s lasting tryst with love

29 October 2008
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PRANAV KHULLAR writing here
 At the heart of the Sufi mystical experience lies the Zikr or remembrance of God.

In its musical expression through the Qawwali , it has become synonymous with the name of Amir Khusro, whose musical idiom facilitated a unique synthesis of the Persian and Hindu-Braja cultures. His prodigious literary and musical experimentation is a unique effort at creating a universal Sufi language of Love and he forged a new mystical Sufi consciousness. This could have been a forerunner of the Nirguna Bhakti movement.

Khusro’s compositions are rooted in the theme of separation from the Beloved, a metaphor for the God within. His verses bring out the intense Sufi longing to merge into this state of mind. His Qawwali music touches that inner space in every listener, transporting him to a different dimension beyond the outer world of duality. (more…)

Abida Parveen sings Faraz’s poem

30 September 2008
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Found this enchanting piece of music here:

In his latest double CD “Paigham-e-Muhabbat” composer Muzaffar Ali, who has brought so much pleasure to our lives in the last two decades, included ‘O des aane wale bata’. This nazm by Ahmed Faraz and Akhtar Sheerani is beautifully sung by Abida Parveen.

For those of us who migrated during Partition from India to Pakistan or vice versa and have memories of the old homeland. Also many who have lived overseas, away from our birthplace for several years, and yet have a deep felt love and nostalgia for what was left behind, it strikes a cord.

In memory of Ahmed Faraz who was one of the greatest contemporary Urdu poets… (more…)

Sachal Sarmast’s sufi kalaam – live recording

17 September 2008
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Cross posted from here

Sachal Sarmast's TombI recorded a few bits of performances of sufi siant Hazrat Sachal Sarmast’s kalaam (poetry) at his tomb in Daraza Sharif, some 50 kms outside Khairpur Mirs.

A trip to Khairpur cannot be complete without exploring many of its spiritual treasures. Khairpur itself is a calm, quiet city. You can feel the stillness of the air.

The Dating Season
I have heard that this stillness becomes slightly oppressive at around this very time of the year – the hot summers – when the area transforms into a gigantic dates bazaar. In the heat and stillness, dates – the prime agricultural product of Khairpur – come to ripen. Temporary shack cities spring up in the area as pickers and traders come in droves. Many use the by-products of the dates industry – the barks and the gigantic leaves – to make woven baskets, sweepers, and other handcrafted products.
Folk performer at Sachal Sarmast's tomb
Sufi Music – Live Recording at the Tomb
But I digress. I recorded several bits of music and this one is my favorite. I used an iRiver MP3 player+radio+recorder to capture the music. The night was calm and beautiful, and our small circle sat with their heads one their knees and eyes closed – in a state of absorption. in our group was Sindh’s popular activist Amar Sindhu, her faithful friend the gentle-natured Arfana Mallah, my journalist friend Afia, and our kind hosts the Joyos.

The Real Sufi was Standing Up
I shouldn’t forget to mention that I went to the tomb to learn more about “sufis.” I found that we had a (more…)

Beyond Borders – with Shubha Mudgal and Tina Sani

30 August 2008
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My article published in the Friday Times (Aug11-18)

Days after the recent skirmishes at the Line of Control, when the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan was threatened, an alternative reconciliation was underway in Lahore. Music became the metaphor of shared ground between the two countries, challenging divides between them that can become violent.

Lahore hosted the legendary vocalist Shubha Mudgal for a few days. The crusade launched by Beyond Borders Television, a production house and sister company of The Friday Times and Good Times, is a unique development in Pakistan’s media world. It is Beyond Borders’ mission statement to produce programming for regional channels that promotes understanding between peoples. Undaunted by visa restrictions and overcoming official barriers, Beyond Borders organised Mudgal’s visit to Lahore to record a tripartite discussion between Mudgal, Tina Sani and Jugnu Moshin, the compere.

The night before the recording, there was a get-together at the home of Jugnu Mohsin and Najam Sethi. It was a typical July evening, marked by the promising stillness of the monsoon. The fragrance of tuberoses, motia and lillies had made the atmosphere surreal and when the power breakdown happened, and candles were lit, it was like a slice out of some previous age. (more…)

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