[Reader-list] Rage, Rage Against

[Rohan DSouza]

Dear All,

I came across this article in Tehelka, which talks about rock musicians in
Pakistan using music as a medium of protest, comment on the state of society
in Pakistan. Corrupt politicans, the military, dictators, music condemning
mullahs are the focus of the satirical lyrics as well as videos. This is an
interesting trend, where rock musicians are not only making such music but
are not being subjected to bans. This wasnt the case till few years ago,
when the band Junoon, faced the ire of the establishment and the clergy,
when they sang their sufi tinged rock.

Music as satire, protest being created and being tolerated, perhaps a
reflection of the changes happening in Pakistani society?

Regards,
Rohan

http://tehelka.com/story_main40.asp?filename=hub270908Rage-RageAgainst.asp

*Rage, Rage Against*

*ROHINI MOHAN** discovers that young, angry bands in Pakistan are taking on
the establishment through cutting satire and poetry*

RUNNING ABOUT the streets of Lahore with a guitar in his hands, Shahzad Roy
finds a lawyer trying clumsily to set a tyre on fire, a disaster
rescue-volunteer pinching a mobile phone from a victim's pocket, and an
American agent lurking in alleys muttering sinister things into a
walkie-talkie. Pakistan's most recent protest song video, Laga Reh (Keep At
It), is a dizzying frenzy of lying politicians, silly TV reporters and Asif
Ali Zardari look-a-likes. It's a song about almost everything Pakistan has
come to symbolise, everything the common Pakistani is weary of.

A pop star for a decade in Pakistan, Roy, who is travelling to Mumbai soon
and hopes to perform in India, never noticed such scenes before and, even if
he did, he still sang about a saali who rejected his advances (Saali Tu
Maani Nahin) and a pretty face he couldn't get out of his head (Teri
Soorat). "I wanted to sing about everyday things," he says. But soon he
realised that the anxiety of a jilted lover may not be Pakistan's everyday
thing.

"When I was 10 years old," says Roy, "I heard a news anchor say that
Pakistan was going through a sensitive time. I'm 31 now, and a news anchor
again said the same thing. When are things going to change?" In the music
video, a balding gentleman looks up from a newspaper, shaking his head in
rhetorical resignation: how is this country going to handle things? Singing
stops, percussions freeze, and Roy winks at the camera: "I really hope not
like it's been handling them so far!" He's frazzled when a mob attacks a
lone man, but his balding friend advises him to look heavenwards, and leave
all the tensions of the mulk to Allah. Roy throws up his hands, "Kuch na kar
tu / Sab kuch Allah pe chod de / Allah hi tera hafiz hai" (Sit around, leave
it all for Allah to fix).

The video is blasphemous, sarcastic and finds a punchline in everything.
Especially when a Zardari looka- like chuckles slimily at the sleeping
masses: "Inko jagana math, yeh kisi zaroori kaam se so rahen hain" (Don't
wake them, they're very busy sleeping). Not surprisingly, the video just
missed being banned. However, Roy confesses his video sponsor pulled out at
the last minute, when he refused to remove some potentially explosive lines.
"If I took out the Allah and American agent scenes, what would be left?"

A hot potato for any Pakistani music channel, Laga Reh is more alive on the
Internet, the preferred lair of a host of protest bands today. "It is nearly
impossible to censor material on the Internet," says Taimur Rehman, a
political science teacher in Lahore who created the band Laal with his
student Shahram Azhar. For seven years, they sang their anthem, Maine Usse
Yeh Kaha (This is what I told him), to small working-class gatherings, and
when Pervez Musharraf imposed the Emergency in 2007, they uploaded a video
on YouTube. A stirring rendition of writer Habib Jalib's poem, Masheer
(Advisor), the song is a satirical statement on the advisors that surround
military dictators. Azhar points out that Habib Jalib might have written it
in the 1960s, against the then dictator Ayub Khan, "but every word seemed
relevant 40 years later, during Musharraf and the 2007 Emergency". The video
uses footage of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, shocked and angry young boys
setting cars on fire, and the long overdue general elections on February 18,
2008.

"Most bands perform an occasional political song," says composer and
guitarist Rehman, "but we have yet to decide whether we want to play an
occasional love song." A self-confessed Marxist, music for Rehman is another
vehicle by which to convey progressive, democratic and socialist ideas. He
would often take his guitar to class in the Lahore University of Management
Studies, and found that one of his students, Azhar, had "the most trained
voice I'd heard in a long time." Azhar, who signs off his emails "Comradely
yours", fumes feverishly about the past 60 years of people being flogged on
roads, robbed of their basic rights. A line in the song goes: "Apne kharch
par hain kaid log is samaaj me" (loosely translated: People are paying for
their own imprisonment). It's an attempt to revitalise revolutionary poetry,
the instigations for which are, unfortunately, still around. Their new album
has three songs on Indo-Pak relations, and lyrics from a more contemporary
poet — Aitzaz Ahsan, who played a key role in bringing down Musharraf's
military government through the lawyers' movement.

When it's not scathing political comment, it's a loud jeering of Gilani the
Groper. Punk rockers Noble Drew do a nudge-nudge number called Thaleon Vi
Chimro (Grind It Down) about Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's hand
casually and repeatedly brushing Information Minister Sherry Rehman's
breasts quite openly at a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) rally. Basim Usmani,
lead vocalist and erstwhile sporter of a purple mohawk, explains that the
song is a place to jot down a country's frustrations, whether with repressed
sexuality or with "the same landlords and thieves running for the same
elections — more hair on their scalps and policies".

Usmani was born in New York and met guitarist Shahjehan, a childhood buddy,
through the Mosque Committee in Massachusetts, where both their fathers
taught. They rocked in a punk band called The Kominas in New York before
they decided to fly back to Lahore, learn some Punjabi, and record more
homegrown songs. Noble Drew sings in Punjabi, a language they feel has been
disregarded in favour of Urdu because of "classicism and snobbery." Usmani
also decided to pursue journalism as a reporter at an Urdu TV channel, to
"get deeper into Lahore."

Noble Drew drummer Mamoon Rashid admits that if the establishment catches on
to the increase in protest songs, they may be shut down. But, as Laal's
Rahman says, Pakistan is perhaps in its most democratic period. "Musical
dissent is so popular now that it would be difficult, dare I say impossible,
to quell it." When news channel Geo TV received word that it would go off
air during the Emergency, they played Maine Usse Yeh Kaha in a promo video
for several days. Azhar points out that by endorsing protest music, common
Pakistanis are saying, "Enough! We're democratic, we're secular, and we
don't want the mullahs and the military to represent us anymore."

Pakistan has long been fighting off the image of orthodoxy. Since 9/11,
there is more suspicion in Western eyes, and sweeping generalisations of
murderous intent. Yeh Hum Naheen (This is Not Us) began as an anti-terrorism
campaign in late 2006, and culminated a year later in a collaborative song
featuring seven contemporary musicians in Pakistan. The campaign website
says it's a message from misrepresented Muslims, who are saddened by the
"hijacking of Islam by terrorists". The video, again, closes in on faces of
leaders — hated and loved. Rickshaw- pullers, officegoers, school-kids, all
sing, yeh hum naheen. In these protest songs, every word has a
socio-political refrain. Noble Drew members may call themselves "lafangas",
but they cannot but be affected by war and murder in their neighbourhood.

"It's become impossible not to address what it means to be Pakistani," says
Usmani, citing how even Ali Azmat (a former member of band Junoon), who
writes party music, has put Kalashnikovs on his album cover.

Laal's Azhar lays it down simply: "The military says we shouldn't speak up.
So we pick the most blazing, rousing poetry. The mullahs say music is
haraam. So we make music our medium of protest." •

 *From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 38, Dated Sept 27, 2008*