Cultural depravation: The sound of silence

Reviving the soul of the city needs the sound of music and songs, not death and explosions.

PESHAWAR: The Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) victory in the 2002 elections in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) proved to be a death knell for cultural activities across the province.

The hardliners tried to gag artists and musicians and also imposed bans on stage dramas and music in the province.

The funeral began with the emergence of the local Taliban, who started their activities in the province by bombing music centres and threatening artists. Many an artist left the province and soon the whole area of K-P and Fata began resembling a cultural wasteland.

The 2008 elections may have reversed the political supremacy of the clerics, however, after two and a half years of the rule of the secular Awami National Party (ANP) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the situation has yet to improve for artists and other people associated with entertainment and culture.

A visit to the Kabari Bazaar on the backside of the historic Qissa Khwani Bazaar where many of the musicians who perform at functions are living reveals that the worst is not yet over. Sarwar Shah, a rubab player, told The Express Tribune that the ongoing militancy has dealt a blow to their profession.

“Earlier people hired us for marriage, circumcisions and other functions at their homes, but now people prefer to not arrange musical functions fearing that this may invite the wrath of militants upon them,” Shah said.

He said that prior to the advent of militancy; they were hired to go to Khyber Agency, Kohat, Darra Adamkhel, Mardan and Charsadda. However, they usually do not go to functions outside Peshawar anymore due to security threats.

Sarwar said that they also get several threatening letters from militants asking them to quit their profession, but they did not blink at such provocations. “Nowadays, if anyone wants to arrange a musical programme in their home, they must inform the police before we can go to perform,” Shah said.

He said that tableeghis also tell them to quit the music business.  The musicians pay Rs 2,000 as room rent and Rs100 per function for transport (which was previously Rs30) to take their bands to venues.

Ashraf Khan, another artist, said that spiralling inflation has impacted their business, adding that the sound-system rental for a programme has gone up from Rs 2,000 to 4,000 per programme.

He said he joined this profession by choice, but would not allow his children to join the field, as it has no future any longer. Shah and Khan both sustained minor injuries when two bomb blasts went off in Qissa Khawni and Kabari Bazaar in May last year. However, it did not deter them from singing and playing music. Most of the musicians now live in the Kabari Bazaar area on the backside of the Qissa Khawni. These artists had lived in their Balakhanas in the city’s Dabgari Bazaar area for centuries. However, in 2004, the MMA government forced them out of Dabgari and they had no other recourse than to shift to this area.

The area around Qissa Khawni Bazaar has been the target of some of the most deadly bombings in recent memory. The government not only forced them out of their homes, but also imposed a ban on staging dramas and music shows in the city’s lone cultural theatre Nishtar Hall. The ban led the artists to record dramas and music on CDs, however, CD centres and music shops were bombed all over K-P and Fata, while the government also banned playing music on public transport.

Prominent Pashto singer Gulzar Alam told The Express Tribune that once police raided a musical programme where he was singing and was beaten up after a verbal spat with a police official. He was then taken to the police lockup, from where he was later released after the intervention of some friends. Gulzar left for Quetta, where he spent the remaining days of MMA rule.

Other singers also left for America and Dubai to escape the ban and threats from the Taliban. Though the new government has been in power for three years now; the cultural scene has yet to improve.

As the people of K-P await a return to normalcy, the words of musical instrument-maker Rahim Murtaza best sum up the problem. “Music is associated with the soul; it has nothing to do with obscenity. When people will need spirit, they will need music.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16^th, 2010.