A sound idea

I have no financial interest in Pakistan and I’m not selling you anything — you’ve already got Coke Studio.

Let us be clear about this. This column is a shameless plug. The justification comes a little later, so bear with me.

First, the disclosure: I happen to be part of a start-up record label that is currently in talks with Coca Cola to sponsor a very interesting group of musicians. These are the Manganiyars of Rajasthan, a community of singers and artistes who converted to Islam about 400 years ago. They are not ghettoised. They live, five to 10 families at one place, in various villages in the Jaisalmer/Jodhpur region. They make their living off arid land and the ploughing of a musical tradition that is rich, secular (by this I mean eclectic), and, above all, theirs. They sing at marriages, deaths, births, at the Barbican in London and the Lincoln Center in New York.

The plug part comes in the shape of Coca Cola. And so does the beginning of the justification. In Pakistan, Coke Studios has done something for which there is just one word: wonderful.

I challenge males of any age to not fall in love with Meesha Shafi as she belts out “Dum gutkoon” with Arif Lohar. (It had 2.5 million plus views on YouTube). And I challenge females of any age not to fall in love with the 70ish Sain Zahoor as he goes into an “Allah Hooooooo”, as if it were an unending spiritual passage.

I saw Sain Zahoor perform at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi some years ago, backed by a rather average supporting cast (not all music out of Pakistan is great). The elderly Punjabi lady sitting a seat away from me was slightly displeased about the performance being marred by this gratuitious sprinkling of mediocrity. In the end, she said: “Let him just sing alone and spin one time like a dervish. That’s all I came to see.” I sensed she was in love.

Some Pakistani musicians I met by chance. Mekaal Hasan, for instance, wasn’t as famous as he is now when we got acquainted in Lahore in 2004. He was a friend’s friend, and a man who loved my favourite band, Steely Dan (do look up the band and the root of the name, both will be worth your while). I remember listening to his music in his studio, and him talking about Steely Dan: “Those guys are sick. They are so good, they are sick. Just sick.”

And now, I use that line about the Manganiyars. And I ask, why isn’t there an up-and-running Coke Studio in India? I point west and say that, despite all the nonsense that’s going on in that country, I hear the sound of music above the cacophony of shrill opinion, above even the defeaning bomb blasts. Why can’t we have some music here?

It isn’t for the lack of talent. This much I know.

So to get to the justification part of this story. This column goes out only in Pakistan, a country I have no financial interest in, except the modest payment I receive in lieu of words. I’m not selling you anything — you’ve already got Coke Studio.

But I have better grounds than merely that. As a boy, I lived at a friend’s place for a bit, near the Calcutta docks. In a government flat that was frequently overwhelmed by the odour of sulphur when the ships bearing this cargo came in.

One of the (many) redeeming features of this place was a box turn-table and a library of LPs that had every ghazal ever recorded (possibly not true, but that’s the way I remember it). I was 14 then, and had perfected the nod of appreciation and the ‘kya baat hai’ that is a must in any serious listening session. These skills were essential especially if there was a Mehdi Hasan record playing. The good thing was that I got to hear Mehdi Hasan. And in one song (Hum hi mien thi, na koi baat) he sang: Kiski zubaan khulegi phir, hum na agar sunaa sakey.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4^th, 2010.