Nohas: Sales to dust

For music shop owners, Muharram is not as profitable as it used to be.

KARACHI:

If Eid is the season for cinema owners to recover all losses, Muharram is the golden month for music shop owners to sell nohas. This year, however, the response to nohas was disappointing as the demand and eventually sale of these religious tunes declined significantly due to a number of reasons. On the seventh of Muharram, the dearth of customers at Rainbow Centre was a rare scene; no nohas were being played loudly and only a trickle of customers could be spotted in the shops.

Shakir Ali, the owner of Shakir DVD, explains, “People are afraid to play nohas. Unlike last year, I haven’t heard a single car with nohas being played out loud.” Even though Ali stocks Indian and Pakistani music in his shop now, previously he used to sell nohas in Muharram due to the high demand. However, this year he has only managed to sell 20 of the two dozen CDs he ordered especially for this month. According to the shopkeeper, “the sale is insignificant” compared to previous years.

When asked the reason behind this decline, salesmen blamed piracy and socio-political turmoil. Zaheer Ahmed, owner of Zee DVD, believes that “the killing of two Shia scouts at Numaish Chowrangi  on the first of Muharram has stopped the Shia community from visiting Saddar. Frankly it was a lose-lose situation for shopkeepers like us. Ten CDs of the 20 I ordered this year still remain unsold and December 4 was the last day to sell anything, as after this, the centre closed.”

The growing security concerns of the Shia community could be a reason for decreased sales, however, recent religious insecurity does not explain why sales have shown a regressive pattern over the years. Abdul Qadir, who owns Imran Audio — one of the main distributors in Rainbow Centre — considers piracy to be a bigger reason than the insecurity itself. “I sold around 45-50,00 noha CDs last year but this year, the sale has only been around 20,000 CDs, while rest of the stock is still lying around in my shop,” says Qadir while pointing towards a pile of unsold nohas occupying a lot of space in his shop.

“The root of all problems is piracy,” Qadir stresses. “Even last year, nohas were released online but they were coded and one could only stream online and download them. This year they were freely available for download, which is why we faced losses,” he says.

Qadir might be adamant on piracy being the root cause for the significant decrease in noha sales but the decrease in number of artists singing nohas is another significant cause.

“Last year, around 250 artists released their noha albums including Nadeem Sarwar, but this time around, only about 100 of them have released albums,” states Qadir. “Maybe the chain of violence against Shias has discouraged many artists from coming to the forefront.”

However, owners of shops located in the commercial areas of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, North Nazimbad and Clifton noticed a slight fall in business, because these shop owners do not depend on noha sales for profits. The major chunk of their profits comes from the sales of film DVDs.

“Nadeem Sarwar’s nohas are in demand and are being sold but not like they used to sell; the spirit is not the same,” says the owner of a DVD shop in Gulshan-e-Iqbal requesting anonymity.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2011.