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Good Sound from a Strange Mountain

Discussions about Pakistan are invariably problematic. If the participants are mainly American, there’s much head-shaking about Pakistan’s role in US-targeted terrorism. With Indians, there’s the inevitable nationalistic jaw-clenching about brutal invading hordes putting babies to the sword, the perfidies of Jinnah, and (if the gathering is intimate enough) how Pakistanis simply can’t be trusted. Worse than either alone are mixed groups. The prejudicial cross-infections about Pakistan that Indians and Americans can instigate in each other are scarier than MRSA on an HIV unit.

In light of the fear and loathing, encountering a truly excellent development in Pakistan is doubly pleasurable. First, because excellence, by its rarity, deserves celebration. And second, because it comes from a supposed area of unmitigated darkness. This development is a show on Pakistani television called Coke Studio. First broadcast in 2008, Coke Studio is a studio-based music show with a full orchestra and killer production values. PBS viewers of Austin City Limits and especially Soundstage will find the format familiar. However, in its second season, Coke Studio has dispensed with the studio audience. The resulting reduction of spontaneity is more than made up by the slicker production values.

So, what’s so special about Coke Studio? One way to answer that question is to see a couple of standouts. Exhibit A is the fabulous (in the classic sense of the word) Sufi itinerant Saieen Zahoor. On Aik Alif, Zahoor is accompanied by the Paki-Pop band Noori, who lend a modern smoothness to the archetypically rough-hewn mystical lyrics of Bulleh Shah, the pre-eminent eighteenth-century Panjabi Sufi. Zahoor is reputed to have left home at 13 to realize a mystic dream. Though it’s tempting to think of Zahoor as being in the mold of Delta Blues singers such as Robert Johnson, his class of illiterate, free, folk mystic has no real analog in the West. (The actual gypsy Reshma comes to mind as another exemplar. But assertively secular, singing mainly of lost loves and broken hearts, Reshma’s oeuvre is reminiscent of a Lucinda Williams.)

You read it all to be wise but never your self
You run to enter every mosque and every temple but never your heart

Every day you confront Satan but you never your self
Says Bulleh Shah, each day you grab at the sky,
but never capture what’s in your heart

My friend, stop pursuing the knowledge out there, stop seeking
The Aleph inside is all you need, the Aleph is all you need
Truth

Refrain: Allah, my beloved

I walk, I walk, with the yogi

He who knows not truth’s power has not God’s strength
We drown in the torrents of our selves; what boat, what rapids?

(Transcription and initial translation from Babelsongs.)

While I’m no reflexive fan of musical fusion, in this performance Zahoor’s dreamy raggedness and Noori’s Putomayo flavoring (“hip and saucy"!”) combine beautifully in the smoothly professional blender of Coke Studio. My translation from the Panjabi is limited by a weak grasp of the language or its melody. Yet the poet’s contemplative spirit shines through the ungainly verbiage.

The song below – Husn-e-haqiqi - is also a spiritual kafi in Panjabi, but there the resemblance ends. The words belong to Khwaja Farid, a nineteenth century poet. The singer, Arieb Azhar, is anything but a wandering mendicant. Rather, he’s a vodka-loving, Croat-Pakistani producer-musician with a definite awareness of his exotic stylishness. It will surprise nobody to learn that Huan-e-haqiqi has become somewhat of an anthem among subcontinental youth.

True beauty

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 Arieb Azhar)

Though those two performances are the most interesting, Coke Studio’s episode archive is a great place to dip into a spectrum of modern Pakistani music from straight-ahead studio-folk to backup babes working over The Monkees! Anyone sampling this musical feast will undoubtedly find much to be curious about:

  • Is this level of sophisticated programming emblematic of Pakistani television?
  • Does the program reflect a purely urban, cosmopolitan sensibility? How does it play in Pakistani Peoria?
  • How does “Pakistani music” fit with the wide and deep Indian musical tradition?
  • What kind of crazily liberal Muslims were the Sufis, and did “regular Muslims (as heard and seen nightly on Fox News) IED them out of existence?

I refer anyone interested in these, and other, questions about Pakistan to the very accessible All Things Pakistan blog. For me, this musical encounter is pleasure enough.

This entry was posted on September 30, 2009 at 23:43 and is filed under Criticism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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