What life is really worth?: Students get up, stand up, and dance for a cause

Concert held to revive revolutionary zeal of the ‘60s with messages of resistance.

ISLAMABAD:

The spirit of freedom and revolution manifested itself through song and dance in the federal capital on Friday, captivating over a hundred students from the twin cities.

A musical evening titled “Songs of Freedom” was organised by KUKNAS, the cultural wing of the National Students Federation (NSF), a nationwide progressive student organisation, at the Aabpara Community Centre.

With posters bearing portraits of activist Hassan Nasir and poet Mir Gul Khan Naseer in the background, artists and musicians enthralled a lively audience of students, trade unionists and activists with song and dance performances.

Arieb Azhar, the show’s headline act, got the audience to its feet with popular Sufi songs. Azhar followed up with Bob Marley’s anthem of resistance “Get Up, Stand Up.”

The show also featured Ammar Rashid, Natasha Ejaz, Rapping Criminals, Umair Jaswal from Qayaas and Doulat Wali Baig with Sodo-i-Pamir from Gilgit-Baltistan.

Lahore-based Yasir and Jawad were also a hit with the crowd. The act’s unique combination of Rubab, guitars and percussions moved some youths to form a huddle at the back and break into dance.

NSF President Irfan Chaudhry said the musical evening was an attempt to revive the diverse cultural heritage of Pakistan among students. “We are trying to spread messages of peace and democracy to the young generation,” Chaudhry said.

The NSF was a popular student body until the 1980s and participated in major political movements. But it faced a severe crackdown and repression during the military dictators, General Ayub Khan and Ziaul Haq regimes due to its progressive ideology.

Chaudhry said the NSF was reorganised during the pro-judiciary movement in 2008.

Since then, the organisation was trying to recapture the space that the left has historically ceded to right-wing student bodies across the country, he said.

NSF General Secretary Alia Amirali said: “The struggle against class difference, inequality, national oppression, imperialism, religious bigotry and patriarchy must play out in both the cultural and political spheres.”

The show was interspersed with speeches about youth’s involvement in politics for social change.

Asim Sajjad Akhtar, an activist and teacher at Quaid-i-Azam University, said the rhetoric of revolution has become everyday routine now, but the political and intellectual elite are in fact just defenders of the status quo.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 13^th, 2013.