What follows is a series of small erm, discourses on anumber of topics that interested me but weren’t deemed suitable for furtherelaboration because, let’s face it, I’m the laziest fella this side of theIndus. They don’t have a common thread running through them and have beenhastily jotted down as I unpack my bags after heading back to my little shed inthe jungle.

Most of the things that I’ve grown to enjoy immensely inLahore were actually my own discoveries ; bookshops, places to eat, places tosee etc that I had stumbled onto in my many exploratory forays. Oneplace however, bears the distinction of not only being pointed out to me by afriend but actually, persuasively prodded towards, and I can safely say thatnever was I prodded towards a more favorable destination. One of the small, nonot small; sizeable pleasures that one can hope to achieve in a long residenceat one place is acquiring a place where, slightly modifying the theme fromCheers, ‘not everybody but at least somebody knows your name’. Thatplace for me is the Lahore Chatkhara in Mini-Market, Gulberg.

The fact that after my initial visit, I could be found thereat least three or four times every month bred a little familiarity. This wasreinforced by the fact that I’d always be carrying a pile of books and wouldinadvertently be waiting for someone, something which sort of singled me outfrom the rest of their patrons. The bond was completed by the fact that thefirst time I tasted what I had been ordered by my friend to taste – a plate ofSamosa Chaat and a bottle of Coke – I was so taken that I immediately orderedanother serving and gave the waitress a pretty phenomenal tip. The happy resultis that now, whenever I go there, I am nodded-at by said recipient of mytipping largesse, led towards my ‘usual table’, allowed to wait uninterruptedfor my ‘usual friends’ and need only to inform them to bring me ‘the usual’. Itmay not be the Anglers’ Rest of the Mr. Mulliner stories or the eponymous barfrom Cheers, but trust me, there’s great pleasure in being a ‘usual’.

The Unbearable Nusrat-ness Of Being

I came late to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Wait, let me rephrasethat, I was a huge Nusrat fan the first 20 odd years of my life but when I’rediscovered’ Qawwali some four odd years ago, somehow Nusrat remained on thefringes of my radar. One of the reasons was that I had been warned off him bythe “purists” – back when I was silly enough to  pay any attention to them, another was thatevery time I listened to him, my mind would always (unfavorably) compare him tohis father, which I realise now was unfair. However, when I graduallyrediscovered Nusrat, I was immediately entranced by his skill, his emotionalityand (unlike what the purists had blabbered on about) his immense ‘ehteraam’ forthe Classical idiom. Of course I had to pick and choose from literallythousands of his recordings, but at least I was a Nusrat fan.

Mark the sequel though. It’s been more than a decade sinceNusrat passed away. Qawwali has seen a decline and then a slight resurgence butthe influence of Nusrat has remained. Not only has it remained but it has grownso overpowering that I’ve noticed a (to me at least) very disturbing trend inmodern Qawwali, namely the Unbearable Nusratness Of Being.

The overwhelming majority of Qawwals have realized thatNusrat sells. As a result, everyone has become what can best be described asrather sub-standard Nusrat clones. In doing so, the Qawwals have all butcompletely abandoned their own hereditary style, their trademark items andtheir unique performance styles. The entire Fareedi clan for example – whichboasted such modern stalwarts as Agha Rasheed Ahmed and Abdul Raheem Fareedi -has decided to convert to Nusratism en masse. Gone are the trademark emotive,classical bandishes. Instead, we have cheap synthesisers, alarming vocalhistrionics and wholesale borrowings from Nusrat’s repertoire.

Another example is one of the rising stars of the currentQawwali scene, Asif Ali Santoo Khan Qawwal, whose father and grandfather weresupremely talented Ustaads of Qawwali, but who has completely moulded his styleon Nusats, with the result that more often than not, his performances veertowards jumbledness and confusion rather than clarity. Even the ‘Dehli-wala’gharanas of Qawwali, both in India and Pakistan, have also eschewed their usualemotive, nuanced and more measured style for a more ballistic and over-the-topstyle that somehow sounds odd to the ears. The overall result being that whereonce the Punjabi ‘ang’ of Qawwali was a many-textured style with differentperformers binging their own uniqueness to the fore, nowadays Qawwali in thePunjab is totally Nusrated.

Now I know this is an honest-to-goodness rant and that I amobviously overreacting to what is the natural result of the presence of atowering cultural figure who cast a very long shadow, but unless some of thecurrent performers discover their own distinctive voices and look towards theirown personal heritage for fresh ideas, Qawwali will degenerate into somethingmuch less appealing and enlightening and satisfying than it’s supposed to be.And worst of all, the purists will be proven right.

When I go on holiday, I don’t necessarily ‘go on holiday’.Let me explain. Others may use the holidays to catch a bit of much-neededR&R, laze about, catch up on their sleep or generally idle. My holidays arethe exact opposite of that. Averaging only five to six hours of sleep per day,I manage to cram in so many activities into the three or four days off I getevery month that I actually need a day-planner to help me get through all thecommitments. These include getting through the checklist in the previous post,the requisite socializing, shopping, taking care of pending official paperworkand downloading as much music and movies and TV shows to last me the month ormore before I next expect to be home.

Another object that is forced to share this increasedholiday workload is my long-suffering phone. Here in the jungle, the phoneserves as a combination torch and Angry Birds console and that’s it. Nocellphone signals and no Wi-Fi means it lives out the month a shadow of its trueself. But let me get in my car and get within cellphone coverage range on myway home, and Abdul Ghafoor (my phone’s named Abdul Ghafoor) comes alive in themost remarkable fashion. Over the course of the next three or four days, Imanage to make more phone calls, send more texts and do more phone-ly thingsthan most people tend to do in their entire lifetimes. My preferred moduscommunicadi being the text message, which I’ve preferred over phone calls for aslong as I’ve had a cellphone.

The pure pleasure of carrying out conversations over SMS islost on people who take the ability to send and receive texts for granted.But to a person who gets to receive terrible jokes and Doomsday warnings onlyonce a month, the true worth of the medium is evident. It’s hard to describethe absolutely nonsensical bracing effects, after having spent a month or morein complete radio silence, of a conversation like this :

Q. Musab bhai, aap ek kaam keejiye.

Me. Ji janab ?

Q. Aap Nijaam ke bal bal jaiyye.

Me.Ji behtar.

A month after arriving in my jungle hideout, I had managedto procure a phone and establish some form of communication, two months later,I improved that to include what can mercifully be called an internet connectionbut the ability to send and receive texts had eluded me. Because of some oddlyconvoluted logic, phones here can carry out any two of the three activities ofvoice calls, text messaging and internet connectivity, but not all three. So inopting for the ability to sit for hours waiting for the Google homepage toload, I relinquished the ability to text. The result was that on my recentlyconcluded holiday, I took out my textual frustrations to such an extent that Imanaged to crash the Messaging application, which is no mean feat on an Androidphone. This brought home the realization that steps needed to be taken, avenuesneeded to be explored and measures needed to be implemented so that I couldspread out my textual largesse over the entire year instead of treating my phonelike a stock-ticker three days a month and letting it grow fat and lazy therest of the time.

As always, the simplest solution has proven the mostpractical. Doing the required math, I decided that to phones were better thanone. One for calling and texting and the other solely for crawling theinternet. So now mine is the only room for miles with two oddly shapedtelephone antennae on its roof. Now all I have to worry about is how to getenough electricity to charge two phones when there isn’t enough for even one.But that, as they say, is a horse of a different colour.

Here’s a question. You know the Festival Of Lights in Lahoreis part of your ‘culture’. Yet you live in Khuzdar, or you’re allergic tolights. Would you then consider it your duty to do whatever you can to preserveand support the Festival Of Lights simply because it’s part of your ‘culture’ ?

I got to dwelling on this question after reading a Facebookpost, a rather anguished post lamenting the treatment of Classical musicians inPakistan, especially the lack of respect paid them and the impending void theywill leave if not appreciated, supported and given their due ‘ehtiraam’. Thisis sadly very true and the handful of senior classical musicians, with one ortwo exceptions, are living out the last days of their lives in penury, mostlyneglected, with their huge talents and ability going to waste rather than beingtransmitted to future generations. The loss to our cultural milieu will beimmeasurable when they’ve passed away. That much is clear.

Mark the sequel though. Classical music has, for most of itshistory, been an art form appreciated by a comparatively small audience, almostlike Opera or Jazz. The small audience has been, for the most part, discerning,passionate and appreciative. And they’ve had the means to support the art-formthat they appreciate. This has taken the form of court-patronage in theprevious centuries and although now considerably diminished, is still carriedon in the tradition of Mehfils and soirees etc. With these means, thepassionate followers of classical music have managed to get their fill of theirfavorite type of music and contribute to the maintenance and sustenance of theclassical tradition.

Like Opera and Jazz however, Classical music is not entirelyignored by the mainstream. In genres like Qawwali, Ghazal and Folk Music forexample, artists like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Mehdi Hassan, Tufail Niazi et alhave been instrumental in introducing the lay-listener to a taste ofsub-continental classical music; a feat that has resulted in a widerlistenership and appreciation for this genre. Yet classical music has remained,for better or worse, a rather exclusive art form, appreciated and nurtured by arather small group of fans (at least in Pakistan). This group is well-versed inthe intricacies, technicalities as well as the niceties associated withclassical music. It knows, for example, the etiquette of a ‘mehfil’ and the‘ehtiraam’ accorded an Ustad, and in mehfils where this group is exclusivelypresent, such niceties are usually expected to be followed.

Any art form, however exclusive, cannot hope to remain bothinsular and vibrant. In terms of Classical music, this problem is somewhatrectified by including a sizeable number of lay-listeners in mehfils and therepertoire is designed to include more popular ‘items’ along with the ‘thaith’classical pieces. Another very common trend is inviting these musicians,especially Qawwals, to functions such as weddings, parties etc where theyperform to a decidedly mixed crowd. Now, the point I was trying to elaborate inthe question of the start of this piece comes into play. How is thelay-listener, with not more than a passing interest in what the musicians areperforming, supposed to react? Does he, despite the fact that whatever is beingperformed is flying over his head or that his attention is constantly beingdiverted by the rather delectable looking lamb-chop at the wedding buffet,feign interest and try to treat the music and the musicians with something morethan cursory attention ? Or does he, following his heart (and stomach), headstraight to the group of his friends – with a small detour at the buffet tableof course – and start chattering like nobody’s business, not giving a hoot tothe group of people gesticulating and caterwauling on stage ?

As an enlargement of the above question, unless theclassical musicians have modified their repertoire to include more populistpieces – a step which will more often than not have the effect of alienatingtheir core audience – why should the lay-listener pay attention to this groupof performers, despite the fact that Classical music forms an integral part ofour national culture. Because from the listener’s point of view, in the currenteconomic and political situation, paraphrasing Faiz – ‘Aur bhi gham hainzamanay main culture kie siwa’. And again, perhaps his cultural touchstonesinclude something completely different from those of classical music fans.Perhaps he digs Atif Aslam and the latest Bollywood music, perhaps he’s intohip-hop or death-metal or Naseebo Lal. Why should he give a hoot to the factthat Ustad Ghulam Hussain Shaggan is currently living in a two-room apartmentin a seedy part of Lahore or that Ustad Manzoor Ahmed Niazi is now the lastsurviving member of a legendary generation of Qawwals or that a treasure troveof Classical music recordings is slowly decomposing in the basement of theRadio Pakistan building in Lahore?

This is a thorny issue, for both the listener and themusicians. Should a more populist approach be tried by the musicians andtolerated by the die-hard listeners or is adherence to the classical idiom,coupled with increased patronage by the core group of listeners the wayforward? Because one thing is clear – at least to me- Classical Music,classical Qawwali and all similar art-forms, will have rather limited appeal ascompared to more popular arts unless drastic changes in performance are made.It will always be up to the small yet devoted group of listeners to archive,promote, nurture and introduce this art form, like it has been in the past. Idon’t know who can shoulder the blame if these art-forms continue to decline,but at least it isn’t the wedding guest noisily munching on his lamb-chop andenjoying the company of his friends, oblivious to the fading echoes of what hecertainly doesn’t consider his ‘culture’.