The Indians Just Do It Better Or Its Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Birthday

Lets see, its either this, if you just want to swing

Or this, if you want to do something else, for its Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s birthday and holiday season in The Islamic Republic of Pakistan – what a coincidence!

Seasons greetings all!

And for the Swiss – those few who are so bent out of shape over minarets – a hearty ‘F**k You’ in the form of some scenes from churches in Pakistan, thanks to Pakistaniat.com, on this holiday season:

Oh, and there are more than four in the country, in case you were curious. And indeed, not to dismiss the problems of the minorities in Pakistan, for they remain and are real. But idiocies like that of the Swiss rankle because they remind us of the myopia, stupidity and ignorance that is at the root of these issues. The Swiss, those few at least, set no example. Hopefully, this season, the Pakistanis can offer the Swiss a valuable lesson about tolerance, acceptance and acculturation, however constrained and limited.

A very merry Christmas.

See you all next Eid ul Fitr.

Who Was That Busker You Gave 50c To? The Same I Paid $100 To See The Night Before!

HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L’ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

That is how this wonderfully funny, and yet poignantly dismaying, story in The Washington Post begins describing how Joshua Bell, one of the world’s leading violinists, stood on a Washington subway platform and performed six Bach pieces on a violin worth $3.5 million. As the article explains:

Called the Gibson ex Huberman, it was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari during the Italian master’s “golden period,” toward the end of his career, when he had access to the finest spruce, maple and willow, and when his technique had been refined to perfection…Twice, it was stolen from its illustrious prior owner, the Polish virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman. The first time, in 1919, it disappeared from Huberman’s hotel room in Vienna but was quickly returned. The second time, nearly 20 years later, it was pinched from his dressing room in Carnegie Hall. He never got it back. It was not until 1985 that the thief — a minor New York violinist — made a deathbed confession to his wife, and produced the instrument. Bell bought it a few years ago. He had to sell his own Strad and borrow much of the rest. The price tag was reported to be about $3.5 million.

And how much did Bell make that day from busking on the Washington subway?

$32.00

You can hear his subway performance here. Its spectacular. But I can’t help but feel that I too would have just walked by, and not even dropped a coin in the bag!

Oh, how I lament my musical illiteracy!

Here is Joshua Bell playing Ave Maria:

Our Songs Carry Our Soul: Khwaja Ghulam Farid’s Husn e Haqiqi

more about “Our Songs Carry Our Soul: Husn e Haqi…“, posted with vodpod

Khawaja Ghulam Farid was a Sufi poet, and this is the Pakistani singer Areib Azhar singing one of his poems Husn-e-Haqiqi (The Beauty of Truth). This performance is nothing short of stunning, one of the more beautiful renditions of this poem I have ever heard. And Azhar’s voice is simply magnificent – controlled and guided to provoke the heart and emotions in a way that only South Asia’s Sufi folk music can.

Below is a translation, by Areib Azhar himself, of this beautiful poem:

O’ Beauty of Truth, the Eternal Light!

Do I call you necessity and possibility,

Do I call you the ancient divinity,

The One, creation and the world,

Do I call you free and pure Being,

Or the apparent lord of all,

Do I call you the souls, the egos and the intellects,

The imbued manifest, and the imbued hidden,

The actual reality, the substance,

The word, the attribute and dignity,

Do I call you the variety, and the circumstance,

The demeanor, and the measure,

Do I call you the throne and the firmament,

And the demurring delights of Paradise,

Do I call you mineral and vegetable,

Animal and human,

Do I call you the mosque, the temple, the monastery,

The scriptures, the Quran,

The rosary, the girdle,

Godlessness, and faith,

Do I call you the clouds, the flash, the thunder,

Lightning and the downpour,

Water and earth,

The gust and the inferno,

Do I call you Lakshmi, and Ram and lovely Sita,

Baldev, Shiv, Nand, and Krishna,

Brahma, Vishnu and Ganesh,

Mahadev and Bhagvaan,

Do I call you the Gita, the Granth, and the Ved,

Knowledge and the unknowable,

Do I call you Abraham, Eve and Seth,

Noah and the deluge,

Abraham the friend, and Moses son of Amran,

And Ahmad the glorious, darling of every heart,

Do I call you the witness, the Lord, or Hejaz,

The awakener, existence, or the point,

Do I call you admiration or prognosis,

Nymph, fairy, and the young lad,

The tip and the nip,

And the redness of betel leaves,

The Tabla and Tanpura,

The drum, the notes and the improvisation,

Do I call you beauty and the fragrant flower,

Coyness and that amorous glance,

Do I call you Love and knowledge,

Superstition, belief, and conjecture,

The beauty of power, and conception,

Aptitude and ecstasy,

Do I call you intoxication and the drunk,

Amazement and the amazed,

Submission and the connection,

Compliance and Gnosticism,

Do I call you the Hyacinth, the Lilly, and the Cypress,

And the rebellious Narcissus,

The bereaved Tulip, the Rose garden, and the orchard,

Do I call you the dagger, the lance, and the rifle,

The hail, the bullet, the spear,

The arrows made of white poplar, and the bow,

The arrow-notch, and the arrowhead,

Do I call you colorless, and unparalleled,

Formless in every instant,

Glory and holiness,

Most glorious and most compassionate,

Repent now Farid forever!

For whatever I may say is less,

Do I call you the pure and the humane,

The Truth without trace or name.

(Translation by Areib Azhar)

You may also want to check out some of the other performances on the Coke Studio website.  This performance by the masterful Saeen Zahoor of Bulleh Shah’s, another Sufi folk poet, is truly stunning.

The entire Coke Studio sessions can be seen and heard here: Coke Studio. It is a remarkable collection of music and talent, a truly beautiful reflection of Pakistan and her deep connections to her Indian heritage. This is not just Pakistani music – this is the voice of South Asia, tracing its heritage and traditions to hundreds of years of development and evolution. These songs, these poems, their voices and their passion transcend boundaries, and reflect the continuities of traditions and cultures that Edward Said was so determined to remind us of.

For Edward Said: Remembering 25th September 2003

Edward Said passed away on 25th September 2003. I am re-reading his Representations of the Intellectual, a book that has had a major influence on my own way of negotiating the world, in his memory this week. Though I never met him when I was at Columbia he was a powerful intellectual force at the campus, and even us on the far edges of his universe could not help but be pulled towards his ideas and views. And we continue to be, with his works Reflections on Exile, After The Last Sky, Humanism & Democratic Criticism, The Politics of Dispossession, On Late Style, Musical Elaborations and Culture & Imperialism repeatedly being taken down from the bookshelf as references or as reminders of ways of thinking

His death was widely mourned, and widely spoken about. Here are links to some obituaries that you may have missed:

• The Guardian: Edward Said
• Asad Raza remembers Edward Said
• Akeel Bilgrami remembers Edward Said
• Al-Ahram: Mourid Barghouti on Edward Said
• Salon: Christopher Hitchens on Edward Said
• London Review of Books: Michael Wood on Edward Said
• New Left Review: Tariq Ali on Edward Said
• The Nation: Tony Judt on Edward Said
• Time Magazine: Daniel Barenboim on Edward Said
• The Village Voice: Moustafa Bayoumi on Edward Said
• The Independent: Gabriel Piterberg on Edward Said

In a small tribute to the man, Democracy Now! has an archive page of Edward Said’s appearances which you can see here

• Democracy Now!: Edward Said

Yes, Your Taste In Music Sucks Or What MTV Erases!

That can either be me talking about you, or your judgment of what I listen to these days. So enjoy it regardless!

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are an old style, talented, string band carrying on the tradition of some of the greatest string musicians from North and South Carolina. Tell me that Rhiannon Giddens voice isn’t simply hair raising!

The next videos is from the brilliant documenta/film called Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus – A tour of the American south through its music and its people.

I loved this film so much that I have been listening to the likes of Jim White, Wovenhand, Johnny Dowd, Mellisa Swingle, and The Handsome Family ever since!

This scene from the film, an interview with Lee Sexton, should be a photograph! I remember watching it the first time and thinking that I would love to have been there to shoot the moment – that perfect artificial light, the beautiful window beam, that perfect and magnificent presence of age and experience embodied in this man. The scene only gets better in the second session when a younger man joins him in the interview – this is a beautiful photographic moment! This is an American light!

David Eugene Edwards – the lead singer of what was once 16 Horsepower and now, more recently Wovenhand was also introduced to me by this film. This is Christian music but seriously spiritual music. Not the cheesy, mass produced, muzak you find in religious bookstores. This is the sound of the belief of the South and in it one begins to see and understand a certain side of America that we often ignore what with our obsession with things New York, LA or Chicago!

Then there was the beautiful Melissa Swingle who appeared in a short clip on the film and stole my heart! Well, my musical heart with the striking, jagged, interupted voice that had so much vulnerability in it that one could not help but be smitten. She lead for the band Trailer Bride, which has disbanded and now she is with a band called The Moaners – hard,, southern rock that I am not such a big fan of. But Melissa remains a wonderful talent – see her song on the film itself!

Moving on: Adem – brilliant, individual singer, you have to listen to. His new album ‘Takes’ is a must:

or

There will be more in the near future!

Not Just Dancing: Our Music Carries Our Pain

There is an increasingly perceptible gap between our need for social transformation and America’s insistence on stability, between our impatience for change and American’s obsession with order, our move towards revolution and America’s belief in the plausibility of achieving reforms under the robber barons of the ‘third world’, our longing for absolute national sovereignty and America’s preference for pliable allies, our desires to see our national soil free of foreign occupation and America’s alleged need for military bases.

Eqbal Ahmed in a dialogue with Samuel Huntington, from No More Vietnams: War and the Future of American Policy

The streets of Pakistan may not be filled with photogenic ‘rebel types’ to fill our evening TV screens here in Europe and the USA. However, voices for change, social justice and rights are strong and largely coming from a new generation of students, activists, intellectuals and ordinary citizens. I can’t help but feel that we are saying farewell to the accommodations and compromises of our parent’s generation, and that a new Pakistani society is working its way up into the seats of power and civil society. And that it is a society that is young, educated, religiously conservative but without being fanatical and intellectually empty.

And as always, when it comes to nations of ‘the other world’, these changes are largely being missed by a media largely obsessed with matters of American policy and insisting on seeing Pakistan less as a diverse, complex and sovereign nation and more as a ‘vassal’ state to American state power and geopolitical priorities in South Asia.

The rock band ‘Laal’ (means the color red in Urdu) has been a musical voice for these transformations. Below is a beautiful version of one of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poems put to music, at a time when the citizens of Pakistan have confronted power and achieved the reinstatement of the ousted Supreme Court Justices -  a landmark moment in Pakistani political, social and civic history.

This video itself captures the anger, frustration and marginalization that sits in the hearts of the ordinary Pakistani.

Faiz’s words give these feelings the immortality, dignity and the honor that they deserve.

The video has English translations for those of you who may not understand Urdu.  Particularly Faiz’s magnificently musical, lyrical Urdu!

more about “Not Just Dancing: Pakistan’s Activist…“, posted with vodpod